Of all the questions I’ve asked myself over the last couple of years, it’s been this one that’s continually proved the most helpful.

It has led me to write dialogues, like play scripts, between my older self and my current self. In them, I have given myself a good telling off when needed but also encouraged new ways of thinking and gained a good dose of courage. I showed a friend one of these scribbles once, and she commented on how funny and feisty my older-self is in these dialogues. That’s something I like too – it reminds me that there is lots to look forward to!

Imagining Your Older Self Provides Perspective

Writing these dialogues certainly helps me to put things into perspective. I don’t think about it too much, but there’s no doubt that my feisty older self has turned into a character. She doesn’t always say what I want either. Once on a safari holiday of a lifetime, I retreated to my tent intending to write a dialogue complaining about the heat and the other guests. “Get back out there,” I found my older-self writing back at me. “I want to be able to remember exactly what an elephant looks like, and I’m not going to have another chance.”

Of course I did. I suddenly realized that decades from now, my annoying holiday companions wouldn’t matter at all, but the memory of the sight of an African elephant walking into the water with the sun setting behind will always make me smile. I shudder now to think how much I might have missed.

Writing a dialogue like this is one of the tools, Tristine Rainer suggests in her classic book about journal writing, The New Diary. In it, she suggests writing a dialogue between family members, objects, even jobs. Obviously, it can’t be taken as truth but the very act of thinking about the situation from another side can help to sort out confused feelings.

Living in the Moment

Just enjoy yourself, is what my eighty-year-old self tells me most often. Stop worrying. Stop being so scared. Give me some good memories.

Writing these dialogues is a way of feeling gratitude for what I’m experiencing now. Pausing from my chores to kiss my daughter’s head, to play another game of Scrabble with my husband, or just to admire the flowers in the garden, are things I know my 80-year-old self will appreciate next time I “talk” to her, and it helps me too to be thankful for what I have now. I don’t want to miss a thing.

That’s right, I can feel her say. Be aware of how lucky you are.

“No one ever went to their deathbed wishing they had spent more time in the office,” the old phrase goes. I know the 80-year-old Sarah would agree with that. And the next time I talk to her, she’ll probably tell me so!

Photo by: Exfordy