A letter to the future

This week, Jenna W., 21, who lives in Indiana, USA, shares a letter to the future.

Dear future,

When I think of the past, the first concept that comes to mind is love letters. The kind that my grandmother sent my grandfather from an ocean away, through battle zones and soaked in wishes.

I foolishly and a little bit stubbornly hope battle zones don’t exist in the future, but I’m sure letters soaked in wishes will, so maybe that is where we’ll start. Here’s one for you:

I hope you can waltz into coffee shops on a whim again, with no mask covering your smile. I hope you can chat with strangers, and I hope you don’t take small talk for granted.

I hope you can cry in old secondhand book stores again, and I hope you don’t glance away when the clerk offers you a tissue and a coupon for a half-off classic.

I hope you can drive to your favorite lake or mountain or hill or ocean and watch the sky turn from night to dawn. I hope one of your friends will misquote S.E. Hilton’s “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” line — the one about the fleeting nature of youth — while the sun inches above the horizon. Robert Frost says nothing gold can stay, but Hilton thinks it can, and isn’t her’s a nicer thought?

I’m certain there’s an awful lot of pressure on your shoulders, even though you didn’t ask to be Atlas, and I hope that the pressure isn’t from us.

People always say that it’s up to the future to save us, but I saw a New Yorker cartoon ( I hope you still have the New Yorker) today that showed a father pointing to a dumpster on fire, saying “Someday, this will all be yours,” to his son. I hope we’ve left you a world that doesn’t need saving, just caretaking.

I sometimes think that we are simply making the world too complicated, and we need to take a page from Kurt Vonnegut who says we were all born yesterday and we’re all just trying our best.

I hope you know that we are on this pale blue dot of a planet only to learn and to be kind to one another. 

I hope you have lots of new stories and lots of grand authors to borrow phrases from and colorful flowers and fruits and knowledge and curiosity and growth. But if you don’t, I hope you have that Dostoyevsky quote ringing in your head, saying “I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies —I exist. I'm tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

I don’t know much about what the world will look like in 100 years, but I know the sun will be there.

And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.

Jenna

Meet Jenna

Jenna is an idealist who takes in coffee like she does oxygen. She studies international relations and journalism at Indiana University and runs marathons in her free time.

Tell us a little about your inspiration for writing this letter, and about your grandparents' love letters.

I have my four favorite literary quotes written out on index cards hanging above my desk, and I added the Dostoyevsky block about six months into the pandemic. In the overwhelming loss, exhaustion, grief and anxiety of this moment in history, I think it can be really easy to spiral into thinking this moment is forever. The Dostoyevsky quote — and this letter — remind me that as long as the sun is there, we have a future. My grandfather was drafted right before my grandparents got married. So he went to South Korea while my grandmother stayed in the U.S., and they are two of my favorite people in the world and the best example of relationship I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if I believe love transcends ages or anything, but I like the idea that in someone else’s future, my generation could be to them what my grandparents’ love is to me.

In your own life, what are your hopes or fears for the future?

Well, my hopes for the future and fears for the future are fairly linked. The biggest fear at the forefront of my mind for the future at large is usually the climate crisis — but in lieu of succumbing to complete cynicism, I’m resting on my hope that people are fundamentally good and that we will show up for our present so people can have a future. In my own life, I’ve historically responded to this question with my career aspirations, but I really just want to be happy. I suppose I’m afraid of getting in my own way to that goal.

What has life looked like during the pandemic for you?

Like everyone, I’ve had to adapt, and like few, I haven’t personally lost family or friends to the coronavirus. I attend most of my classes, work and extracurriculars online, but I’m based in my college town still at the moment. I don’t leave my house save for the grocery store and the occasional to-go coffee run. I think a lot about the infinite loss of so many people, so the biggest change in my pandemic life is that I try to keep in mind that no one is OK right now and thus to lead with empathy and give as much grace as I can.

What's one thing that you're excited about and one thing that's keeping you up at night right now?

One of my best friends is an art student, and she thoroughly believes a second renaissance of sorts will follow the pandemic. It’s a thought that actually gets me through a lot of grief, that while there is obviously no replacement or reprieve for people who have lost someone in this crisis, perhaps at least on a macro scale, we’ll be gifted new books and films and creative movements after the pandemic (an unpublished 10th circle of hell? I would love to ask Dante.)

The things that keep me up at night I imagine are the things that keep every girl up at night: What will my life look like and who will be in it? I could elaborate, but I feel like it’s a universal enough experience that I would merely be preaching to the choir.

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