Dear 100-Year-Old Me,
If this letter has found its way to you, it means you have lived a long and extraordinary life. A century of memories, lessons, relationships, and stories. I wonder what the world looks like for you now. I wonder what parts of this life you held onto and which ones you allowed to change.
Right now, I am in the middle of becoming. I am building a career that centers care, community, and belonging. I spend my days helping students find their place in the world and learning, often imperfectly, how to lead with compassion. I hope that somewhere along the way I continued to hold onto that sense of purpose, the belief that people deserve spaces where they feel seen and valued.
I hope you are still curious.
I hope you never lost the part of you that loves stories, whether they come from books, films, or the lives of the people around you. I hope you kept writing, even if the audience was small, even if it was just for yourself. Stories have always been a way of making sense of the world.
Did you travel the places you dreamed about? Did you keep nurturing friendships that made life feel lighter? Did you create spaces, literal or figurative, that felt like home?
More than anything, I hope you lived gently with yourself. I know how easy it can be to focus on the things left undone or the paths not taken. But if you made people feel cared for, if you helped others grow, if you loved deeply and allowed yourself to be loved in return, then I think this life was well lived.
If you can still remember this version of yourself, I hope you smile at the ambition and uncertainty that lived side by side. I hope you feel proud of the risks you took and the life you built one step at a time.
And if you have any advice for me across the years, I suspect it would be simple: keep choosing kindness, keep choosing curiosity, and keep choosing connection.
Take care of yourself.
With hope,
Your younger self
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