Seal a note to the you of five winters from now, then forget it. Opening it will feel like meeting a stranger who knew you.

The person you are now becomes genuinely unfamiliar over enough time, and a sealed note is one of the few ways to meet them directly. Memory will not manage it, because it quietly updates the past to match whoever you currently are. A letter is fixed, and therefore honest.

Write one this week and be specific about what worries you, what you want, who matters to you right now. Date it and put it somewhere it will survive. The more ordinary the detail, the stranger and better it reads later.