There Are Things I Need to Tell you
Write a letter to yourself today, from you at one hundred years old.
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning. There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?
— Meg Rosoff
There’s another part to this quote: I know you are unable to imagine this. Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel.
A hundred years seems like such a long time ago. I mean, so much of the world has changed since 1919. Almost everything.
Except, has it really? The surface stuff has. Cars instead of carriages. Computers instead of libraries. Smart phones instead of telegraphs.
The prison industrial complex instead of Jim Crow. (Did you know Jim Crow laws were enforced until 1965. 1–9–6–5.)
But maybe the bones are the same. Or more the same than it seems.
Time is a stretchy, weird thing. I wonder what your almost-100-year-old self would have to say to the you that you are right now.