The Unfinished Present: A Letter to My Future Self

A candid and introspective letter blending humour, vulnerability, and social awareness—reflecting what today’s youth hopes the future will become.

A quiet moment of reflection—writing to a future self shaped by hope, struggle, and courage.

Dear Future Me,

If you are reading this, congratulations on being alive. That alone means you survived at least three thousand or more moral panics, a few economic collapses, and some life crises.

First things first: have you finally learned to stop overthinking at 3:09 a.m., or are you still conducting full parliament-style debates inside your head? Please say you improved. If not, wow! Consistency.

I am writing to you from a present that feels unfinished. Everything around me is in drafts, from beliefs crossed out and rewritten, hopes underlined and fears left in the margin. If you are reading this, time has done what it always promises and seldom explains: it has carried me forward.

I don’t know what shape you will be in by the time this reaches you. I do not know whether you arrived gently or with disruption, whether you rewarded patience or tested endurance, but I hope you have become kind enough to choose yourself every day amidst all chaos. It’s a full-time job believing in yourself. No days off.

So, girlie, tell me about the technological development. I am sure that if they invented a pill that let you never bathe, you would have been their first customer.

Apart from this, what changes were made in your world? Has disability-inclusive infrastructure and inclusive schools for people with cerebral palsy been made? I hope Didi visited that school. I can imagine how happy she must have been.

Did researchers find a way to conduct trials without harming animals? Are researchers focusing on menstrual and reproductive health? Does society still feel it's a taboo to talk about? Promise me you stood against it. You went to the nooks and corners of this country to raise awareness among the females? Did the world try shushing you? I hope you didn’t surrender your humanity due to fear.

So did AI actually take up your jobs, or did human intelligence tame it? I belong to the era of the AI bubble and data compromises. Is your world just? Do you still use smartphones or have a body in-plant chip system? How do you manage data privacy? We are trying to maintain our privacy. We went out to offer policy criticism, constructive suggestions for policymakers, and fought each day with optimism. I wish the convenience of misuse of power and breach of privacy would finally lose in front of conscience and morality in your era.

I hope you live in a time that learnt the discipline of listening.

In our present, we often confuse volume for conviction and speed for truth. If you inherited calmer conversations, it is because we practised patience when impatience was rewarded and restraint when outrage was profitable.

I worry about what we normalised. We told ourselves that temporary exclusions were necessary, that collateral damage was unfortunate but unavoidable, that efficiency excused erasure. If you are reading this in a more humane era, it is because someone refused those shortcuts. I'm concerned about the planet you received.

We spoke of sustainability while living unsustainably; we measured growth while spending natural capital. If your rivers run clearer and your summers are kinder, know that it required inconvenient choices made by people who were told it was too late or too costly to try.

Do u remember those class 6 girls from your fieldwork, who tried for 15 sessions to muster up courage and speak on stage about the inequality they face in their house due to gender? I hope you gave wings to many more like them.

I carry concerns that were impossible to ignore. About women being told to adjust rather than to advance. About caste being declared irrelevant while quietly structuring opportunity. About laws and policies that looked progressive on paper but failed people in practice. If you live in a time where dignity is less conditional, it is because some people refused to treat injustice as normal.

This present is full of contradictions. We speak constantly of progress, but carry old inequalities forward in new forms. We celebrate freedom, yet negotiate daily with fear, pressure, and silence. I hope you have learned that we struggled to accept that development without dignity is hollow, and speed without reflection is dangerous.

I'd rather be a person of paradoxes than a person of prejudice because paradoxes create thinkers, and prejudice creates prisoners.

If you are kinder than we are, then remember how hard kindness once was. If you are fairer, remember how deeply unfairness was normalised.

If you are more inclusive, remember those who insisted on being heard when it was inconvenient to listen.

Let justice in your time not be reactive, but preventive; not symbolic, but lived.

It’s been 5 years since I left NEET and studied sociology, but I carry the regret and taunts of not qualifying. Does Ma taunt you even now? I hope you made peace with the fact that it’s her living life for the first time, too.

If guilt visits, let it speak—but don’t let it rule.

Let it remind you, not define you. Now, stop spiralling; sip down a glass of water to hydrate yourself. Have you reached your goal of seven glasses per day yet, or do you still consider yourself a camel? Let me remind you that you are, howbeit 5'3 without a hump.

I envision you grew beyond the societal measures of pass and fail and did what your heart desired. I pray you haven't fallen prey to the iron cage of bureaucracy and stood high on your morals. I believe you have found every way to help the people you once dreamt of uplifting.

And if you have forgotten us, that is acceptable. Every generation deserves its own questions.

But if you remember, remember this: we tried sometimes clumsily, sometimes courageously to imagine you better than us.

If I were to believe in the existence of the ‘day of reckoning,’ the judge of souls would ask, “What is the best and worst thing about being human?” I wouldn’t think twice before saying “the cognisance of comparison.”

Humans are extremely contradictory creatures who have the synapses of neurons to create comparisons between big and small, rich and poor, men and women, emotional and practical; humans are great at creating dichotomies to treat everything unequally. Yet humans have the enormous potential to evolve, think critically and compassionately, and develop a consciousness that can erase and annihilate this inequality.

The beauty of this ‘duality of human existence’ makes them human. I am writing from a place of aspiration, where I hope you are on the side of unlocked potential, where you stand against any inequity and injustice and are fully ready to answer a fulfilled, hearty "yes" when the purgatory asks, "Did you choose your side?" My love, nothing is scarier than avoiding your full potential.

When life tries to shame you for moving forward, remember, my dear, it’s better to live in the despondency of progress than to embellish regret for not trying.

Because when memories would try to rip you off carnivorously, you would have the satisfaction of strong limbs that ran.

And remember, if everything around seems dark, look again; you might be the light.

With quiet faith,

A Voice from your past