The key to happiness

learn to love Future You

It took me a long time to understand about Future Me. Or rather, it took me a long time to learn to love Future Me, rather than seeing her as the dumb bitch who was going to have to deal with this mess I was currently making and then failing to clear up.

But then I got it. About a decade ago I was writing about “nappy grab bags”, for making potty training easier. Rather than toting a large change bag around with fluffy nappies and deflated wet wipes packs sloshing from side to side, my idea was to slimline this.

You take a ZipLoc and within it put: one nappy, one clutch of wipes (sealed within their own ZipLoc for freshness), one pair of disposable gloves, one pair clean underwear, two nappy bags. This neat, slithery parcel could be slipped into a slimline bag or even a capacious pocket. It was like being young again.

And the real twist was that in each ZipLoc, one final thing: a treat. Perhaps a pack of gum, a cheerful note, or a Twix. “A gift,” I wrote, “for Future You.”

I thought nothing of it, it just struck me as a funny thing to say. But from then on the concept of an act of kindness to my future self stuck with me.

I have always dismissed “be kind to yourself” as marketing jargon - to persuade us to buy expensive bubble bath, chocolate, or shoes. But slowly a more pure meaning of being “kind to yourself” emerged to me through the fog of it all.

I started to see things that I had previously thought of as unbearable chores done for some unseen moralistic overlord - putting away worn clothes, cleaning the kitchen properly before bed, preparing my kids’ stuff for the next day, saving documents somewhere logical on my laptop - as acts of deep self-love. It was not a chore, it was a gift to Future Me.

If there is anything I want to be able to pass on to my children, it’s this concept. Love yourself, yes, but this means loving Future You even more than Current You. What can you do today, right now, that will make your life even 1% easier tomorrow?

Of course my children ignore me or point and laugh and say, “Trump is back, there is no future,” but I have to keep trying.

On another point: I have been feeling unusually dreadful recently - fractured and anxious - and it occurred to me that I haven’t taken any vitamins for about six months. I know that many people think vitamins are a load of bunk and the effect is purely psychosomatic but the fact is that a psychosomatic effect is still an effect. Anyway I took a possibly dangerous amount of magnesium glycerinate yesterday and one of Giles’s 50+ multi-vits and I’m crossing my fingers.

How about you? What have you done for Future You lately? Are vitamins a load of bunk? Please leave an instructive comment in the box below.