Annual Letters

If I had asked you exactly one year ago what you were doing, what you were thinking or what situation you were in, would you have been able to give me a definite answer? Probably not. But there is a way of knowing.

There is an idea that I have adopted as a principle, and I do not hesitate to express it often, both in my writings and in conversations with my friends, when the subject comes up.

A person's life can change completely in at least 6-12 months.

Let's scale that up. Fast forward 10 years ago. You won't find this difficult because the years that have passed have already made you a completely different person. It shouldn't be too hard to notice.

Now do the same for 5 years. Even if you don't find it difficult, at first you will think that this is the year 2020 and what happened around you or what you did in that year. Again, it will not take you long to make a decision.

But is it possible to say that so quickly for 1 year ago?

First you will use the same method: You will go back to the spring of 2024, try to remember what happened in your life during that period, and you will come to points where you will be in a dilemma before making a decision.

“Did this happen last year or the year before? I'm not sure. I think I'm confused."

True, you are not the same person, there is no doubt about that. But remembering is a process that develops by connecting different events. So you will read some of the notes you took, analyse some of the pictures you saved, or maybe get help from your family/friends.

I don't know how many of you still do this, but the calendars we traditionally hang on the wall, put on the desk, but only look at occasionally, give us the feeling that they don't have much value over time. It should be the other way round; the days and memories that pass should have validity. Even if they do not have the same vitality as on the first day, when we think about them they should remind us of where we have come from and what we have done.

Photo by Liam Truong on Unsplash

There is an attempt to do this that I started in 2014. Today I am going to continue it for another year.

In the beginning, while chatting with a friend, we came up with the idea of writing letters to each other. After writing them, we put them in a box and hid them (we buried them at the bottom of a tree) and dreamt of reading them a year later.

At the same time, I made a note so that I would not forget to get the box out after a year, and I did not forget to add some of my feelings. Time after time, things did not go the way we thought they would and our friendship ended. And who knows what happened to the box.

All I had left was my note and a me surrounded by different thoughts for the next year. I wanted to put a positive spin on the situation, so I decided to make it a tradition and in March I wrote a letter, this time not to someone else, but to myself. I have never stopped since then and will continue to do so today.

Not surprisingly, there were many differences between the new me and the me of each year, let alone the me of 2014. Furthermore, although I thought of myself as a stationary, slow and quiet individual, this was how I could evolve. I realised that life somehow pulled us to different points. No matter who we were, this was definitely the case.

The magic of the process was enough to hold me. To see that my life, which I saw as simple and quiet, had actually changed more than I had expected, made me realise. In recent years, whenever I have such thoughts, I remember the content of the letters I wrote. What I left a year later never stayed the same, but always took a different form.

You could see that in a negative way. Sometimes I would say: “I can't even keep my dreams for a year, what a mess!” But if I hadn't done them, I wouldn't have found the possibilities to strive for my new desires. So all these things I have written make me grateful again for the value of the moment and all the positive/negative experiences.

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So there you have it. I don't know if the me of 2014 could have predicted that I would carry on, but he would have been proud. Even though I continue in different directions and forms from the original plan, I am careful not to break my chain.

I have done some research to form my subsequent letters into a pattern. I use the app FutureMe, which I first sent by email and which I now know has become an application. You write your letter and send it for a future date. When that date arrives, you get a notification and you can continue if you like, it's as simple as that. I invite you to gather your thoughts and feelings today or on a day when you feel good and then write a letter and seal it for a future date.

We always say, "How quickly the years go by". But 1 year is even longer than we think, a long time. We only realise it when it is over.