There is a recent trend on TikTok where people post about meeting their younger self for coffee. This sweet, albeit cheesy, trend involves comparing the differences between one’s past and present self, saying things such as “She showed up 10 minutes late. I was 10 minutes early.” Seeing these videos, I often imagine myself making one in a few years. I wonder what I would say about my present self, and in which ways I will grow. It made me think about the ways I bring my future self into my present life.
For much of my life, I would imagine myself in future situations that hadn’t happened yet. I would become my future self, in a sense. This allowed me to feel a bit of peace, like I was preparing for any situation by playing it out in my mind. The issue with this thinking, however, was that I was imagining my present self in a situation that I would never be in. For instance, I often worried about going away for college when I was in high school, imagining the worst. After going to college, I realized that my high school self was worried about it so much because that version of me wasn’t equipped to handle college. By the time I finally did step foot on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, I was a few months older and ready. Basically, I was a different person than the one that could only imagine going to college. I was actually going.
Maybe it’s the coffee chat TikToks, or the fact that I watched “Interstellar” for the first time, but I’ve now changed the way that I think about my future self. I imagine a conversation through time, rather than trying to become a future version of myself. When I feel myself spiraling about graduating in less than two weeks (!), I picture a future version of myself, laughing at how anxious I am. This isn’t to say I expect everything in my future to be taken care of. I know that as someone trying to make it in the film industry, things will be far from easy. But I also know that the things that kept me up at night in the past have all, for the most part, resolved themselves with time. I did make friends in college, I did find some internships, and I didn’t drop out because I missed my family and my cat too much. Mostly, I handled things as they arose, because each version of myself had skills to deal with the problems I had. My past self who was just imagining the worst decidedly lacked those skills (and most skills, because this is the same version of myself that accidentally left my car running during an AP test).
So when questions about the future come up, (because how do people make friends after college, and will all my college friends and I lose touch? Will I ever be able to afford my own place, or be forced to live in my childhood bedroom forever? Will I constantly miss Carnegie Mellon, like a sad football player in a movie who peaked in highschool?), I’m more prepared now. I can feel my future self’s presence, reminding me that there is life beyond my current problems. I’m no longer becoming her, nor am I demanding answers from her. I don’t know what the future holds, so I leave her to deal with her own issues. And when graduation does come with all its unanswered questions, I know all versions of myself will be watching proudly, despite this version just wondering what’s next.
By: Clare Katyal
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