A decade has (or will have) passed since I wrote this...

Dear FutureMe, Who would've ever believed how things would turn out? You already knew that life was, in the end, mostly unpredictable. But still, I'm sure you didn't expect to really succeed as well as you have. Your partner is doing better and better as the years pass. Her PTSD and related issues have grown less and less obtrusive for both of you. She is happier than ever. And you two are happier with each other than ever. It still surprises you both that you got married, but, then again, you always said you would do it when everyone had the opportunity to do so. The hateful crowd who tried to ban gay marriage failed after a long fight, and the country you feared was going to become a completely corrupt place caught in a perma-war with everyone, in the end it became a much better place, a beacon of light for other nations, an example worth following. Yeah... It seemed like a fantasy when you wrote this, but sometimes the good overcomes the bad, whatever the hardships in between times. Your partner is nearing forty years old, now. She is still every bit as lovely a woman as you've ever known. Her smile is a regular feature of your days, and her laughter has somehow become richer, fuller, more life-sustaining than it used to be. The lines in the corners of her eyes are from that laughter, those smiles, the good times you've made together. People are amazed that you two have such an astoundingly good relationship. Personal friends recall how you both struggled through the hard times like they're recounting a myth or a fairy-tale. Maybe it is a bit like that, after all. As you sit together on the porch sipping mojitos, watching cars pass as the heavy drops of a summer rain sound along the tree-lined street, holding hands, you marvel at what dogged persistence can accomplish. You two have that persistence in abundance. You never quit cheering her on, and she -- with all that intelligence and passion and desire -- found her way up that mountain and stood atop her world. That weariness you sometimes see in her? It's nothing compared to the triumph she's made of her life. Your boy is eighteen, now. Damn -- but how did the time pass? He's strong, healthy, and despite the adolescent need to push buttons and pick at tender spots, he's still as sweet as he was when he was only eight and still completely oblivious. He works hard on himself, and his goals are nearer than ever. He'll graduate college and attain them all, you know. Your daughter.... She's doing so amazingly well! Her mid-twenties are in sight! What a different world she inhabits, now. It's good to have her back in your life, isn't it? You thought that you'd lose her to the distance she grew up in, living so far from you, her naturally reclusive dad, but she fought to pull you out of your shell, appealing to your need of her and your sense of familial ties. Now, she's telling you of her life and giving you her heart, and you are more grateful than you could ever express. ........ And what of you, my friend, my older self? Have you figured it out, yet? Here you are, nearly fifty years old, with so much to look back on. You've seen your parents die.... You never thought you'd take away so much from that experience, as heart-wrenchingly difficult as it was. They brought you into the world and left it before you. Flawed and fallible, the loved you as well as they could, and somehow, in the end, you could forgive them for all the painful errors and oversights. You find that, nowadays, you can forgive all the world. You know that your love demands it of you; your heart doesn't understand grudges, however much it appreciates cynicism. You've learned that you get from the world only what you give it. Has it given you yourself, yet? All the people who've come and gone in your life. Some have done well, and others have not. Some have grown in ways that you find outstanding in any sense. Some have faded away like chill fogs in lonely fields. Those who touched you most -- well, you wish you knew where they all were. Wherever they are, you wish them well. You always wanted them to have what you, yourself, always wanted: peace, stability, insight, and love beyond measure. ........ I wish that you could have written to me, here in 2006. I wish that you could reassure me about what I've written here to you. Truth be told, I'm scared a little bit, because the future is a wildly uncertain place and there are so many, many things I'm hoping will go well for myself and others. Looking at a paycheck that hardly pays the most important bills, I wonder how I'll ever get out from under the burden of debt. Sometimes, I worry that things will go horribly wrong, that the very worst things will come to pass. Sometimes... I fear that I'll be destroyed or, worse, that I will fail those I could never stand to fail. And yet, there you are! Or, rather, here you are -- in 2016, no less! Life has gone on. New discoveries have been made in many fields of human endeavor. Surprises have unfolded like gorgeous flowers to awe the world. Events have happened that shook the world. Nearly countless numbers of people have been born and very nearly as many have died. Tragedies, comedies, and indescribable events have come to pass. Countries have fallen. Wars and disease have taken their toll. Societies have been turned upside down and amazing forms of enlightenment haver come to some. In short, life is still very much what it has always been here on earth for humanity, only different. I know you are glad to be here to see it for yourself. Whatever ache in you was driving you to want to just sleep... just sleep forever... was never strong enough to overcome the drive in you to really live, to really see, to really take it all in and find the meaning of it for yourself, so that that heart of yours could in turn give it back to those in your life who could appreciate it, who wanted it, who cherished it. Well, I should probably close this letter. I could write a lot more to you, maybe jog that old man's memory of yours. Did you ever remember that you were going to have this sent to you from back in the day? Haha! Oh, such a lot of faith I must have in "teh iN7aRweB5!!!!!!1!!". Hahaha! Sheesh. And yet, yeah, I kind of do have faith in this technology and the people behind sites like futureme.org and my email service provider. Somehow, some way, I expect that this letter will get through to you. My only wishes are that 1) you forgot about this letter and are now happily surprised, and 2) the future has turned out even better than I imagined it in 2006. I really want things to go well, my friend. I really hope that things went well. With much love, I remain... ~Myself PS: The day I wrote this was warm and sunny, 78 degrees Fahrenheit with a forecast of 98 for the day's high temp., with a possibility of thunderstorms. I was wearing my hemp shoes, Loomstate jeans and an AC/DC "Back in Black" tee I bought at Target for $14. The portable swamp cooler and overhead fan were on. There was food in the house and drinks in the fridge. The day I wrote this, I was pretty much broke, waiting on my paycheck to arrive sometime in the next couple of days, worried about money like field mice worry about birds of prey. The day I wrote this, I missed work because I didn't have enough gas in my champaign colored, four-door 1996 Saturn SL1 to get there and back. The day I wrote this, I was nonetheless happy, -- happy despite a number of things that might have dragged me down. I was happy because I realized, after writing this letter to you, that I do actually have some real hope in me, in life. The day I wrote this, my life's partner was struggling with a lot of things, but she was already proving that she could, and would, succeed. And my love for her was even greater than the day before. The day I wrote this, my favorite music was spread out between bands like Porcupine Tree, Radiohead, New Pornographers, Rogue Wave, Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins, Spoon, Neko Case, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, The Arcade Fire, Devics; various trance albums (like Sasha's Involver); old faves like The Legendary Pink Dots, Swans, Al Stewart, Pink Floyd; hip hop artists, such as Saul Williams, RZA, ATCQ, Blackalicious, Talib Kweli and Mos Def, Foreign Exchange, Copperpot, 2 Mex & Baldhead Slick; and a few metal bands, such as Darkest Hour, Bloodbath, A Life Once Lost, Cannibal Corpse, Sepultura, and Meshuggah. I wish I could name all of them here, but there are too many! I haven't even touched classical, or ambient, or.... The day I wrote this, I was still reading Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale, as well as Catch-22. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was still my favorite novel ever. I was still perusing the New Yorker whenever it arrived. My favorite movie directors were Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Tony Bui, Federico Fellini, Ang Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki. I'm sure I kicked myself later for forgetting or failing to mention a bunch more! The day I wrote this, Kubrick's Paths of Glory was still in the DVD player, and my beloved and I had recently watched Yash Chopra's Veer and Zaara (which we totally loved). The day I wrote this, 10 years seemed a long, long way away.