Notes From Your Future Self
Weekend Reads 21.2.2026
There’s an excerpt from an essay I’ve been saving to share with you, and today feels like a good day to do that. The writer looks at quitting his smoking habit, and at one point he shares with the reader the advice he would give his pre-smoking younger self.
It’s an exercise many of us do – drafting advice we’d share with our younger selves, an impossible person to reach. We assume our younger selves would cling to the pearls of wisdom we’d dispense today, but it’s quite likely those pearls would be handed back to us with an “I can take it from here.” After all, that’s what we did when we were younger and were gifted bits of wisdom from grandparents, parents, history books, and the like.
But, oh if we could just go back in time.
How about I share the excerpt that sent me down this rabbit hole before I fall back down the rabbit hole?
“When I try to remember what it was like to be that age, what I remember is a burning desire to be somebody else. I don’t just mean that I didn’t want to be me, but that I also actively wanted to be other people, who happened to be near me at the time. If I felt defined by anything, it was the absence of those instinctive ceremonies of self that the people around me were conducing [sic] quite unthinkingly. And if I didn’t have an instinct for scandal or Olympian hauteur or social grace or a gift for euphoric absurdity or a straightforward way of loving those around me or emotional percipience or a really cool skill, and was besides a 0.01st-percentile dancer with a wrong sort of face and walk, at least I could roll a cigarette quicker and better than anyone else and I always had something to do with my hands.
I’ve been wondering what advice I could give my younger self about smoking. There’s nothing I could say about the dangers he wouldn’t already know. I think I’d tell him about this adjacent fear he had—of turning into someone he didn’t recognize. I would say that like most people, he would surprise himself by turning into someone who felt more sympathy for his past iterations than they ever really felt for themselves. As for quitting, it’s like anything else. You just miss it every day until you don’t.” (Source)
To wallow in regret, what-ifs, and should-haves is most often a counter-productive exercise, and yet I continue to do it. Recently, though, I’ve been flipping the script when I am tempted to stare in the rearview mirror for far too long.
What might my older self tell me today if time could be bent to allow this miraculous meet up to occur? I mean, I prepare for my future self on a regular basis. I save for retirement. I tidy up and stock the freezer so that I’ll walk into a clean house that offers something for dinner after a long trip. I turn in early in preparation for a busy day. Given that I am preparing for my future self so often, it’s not hard to imagine a conversation between my future self and my present self.
Certainly there would be talk of flossing, exercise, and getting more sleep. But what might she tell me in regards to choices? Perhaps she would encourage me to invest in myself more through hobbies. She’d certainly frown on my screen time. I suspect she’d tell me to spend less time worrying about what strangers think and to invest more in the people who invest in me. She’d certainly tell me to write more letters and to prioritize the little ones in my life. To never miss an opportunity to tell the love of my life that he is the love of my life.
90 seconds of imagining the counsel my future self would give me today feels far more productive and positive than all those minutes I’ve spent replaying the past. To be sure, reflection is a key part of healthy growth, but dwell too long in reflection and you risk twisting that healthy review into a harsh and counter-productive admonishment.
What about you? How do you imagine a conversation between your future self and your present playing out? Where would your future self encourage and praise you? That place of encouragement and praise feels like it might be a good place for us to start a new week, doesn’t it?
A stunning garden in South Africa.
It’s not always easy to make new friends, especially the older you get. This essay makes the case for seeing friendship like exercise – focusing on the middle versus those weird early days of forming a friendship.
Absolutely here for the Toy Story 5 trailer!
Yet another study about how Gen Z is charting their own course. This time, someone out there with a calculator found that individuals born under the Gen Z banner are twice as likely than their Millennial counterparts to never watch live sports regularly.
This restaurant in Milan looks fun. Bonus points for their live music section and record store.
Don’t sleep on Lake’s annual sale. (Ha! Pun!) Lake makes the best pajamas. Somehow their magical softness holds up wash after wash after wash. They offer great pajamas for men and kids.
Apparently the bathrooms in New York City’s trendiest restaurants have an “it” candle. It is described as having “notes of cedar, palo santo, and fireside embers” and “offers a ‘romantic, transportive quality.’”
This profile of a dramatic Tudor Revival home, coupled with The Polo Bar’s moody green tile that keeps popping up on social media, lead me to believe we will soon see a trend of deep green tile appearing in bathrooms.
This tracks: “Going to the Same Place Over and Over Again Is Really Good for You, Actually.”
A new health trend has arrived on the scene called “stacked water.” Have you heard about it?
The family tree of Greek and Roman Gods gets the YouTube treatment. The poster version of this family tree might be especially handy for the students in your life.
Staying on the history theme, this video from the Victoria and Albert Museum shows the techniques that would have been used by ancient Egyptians to carve hieroglyphs in stone.
Is mascara falling out of fashion?
50 Under-appreciated moves. 100% in agreement re: Jane Eyre and The Painted Veil. Both are excellent.
Interior design tricks from a former staffer at home magazines.
Whoa, check out the candles on this cake.
Take gentle care of yourself this week.