A letter to my 75-year-old self

Mastering the passage of time

We’re constantly making choices that we’ll either benefit from or pay for later. In every moment, we’re either borrowing from the future or investing in it.

Professor Hal Hershfield, author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today describes mental time travel as a defining feature of being human. We can imagine our future selves, and our ability to feel empathy towards a clear picture of who we might be in the future, is key to driving the kinds of decisions we take today, such as investing in a pension or looking after our health.

So here’s a little experiment in mental time travel that I’m employing in writing a letter to myself 20 years in the future, to be read in September 2045 when I turn 75 and my body celebrates three-quarters of a century.

Trigger’s Broom, or the Ship of Theseus

Of course, it isn’t truly my body that’s 75 years old - like the “Ship of Theseus” or the idea of “Trigger’s Broom” from the UK Sitcom, Only Fools and Horses, it continually replaces its parts over time, yet in essence is the same body. This ever-generative aspect of our human bodies gives us a degree of agency over our health. We are made of the food we eat, the air we breathe and the physical stresses and strains of everyday life that our ever-changing bodies adapt to. We are our own creation, our own work of mastery.

In my Health Mastery Programme, we explore this idea under the theme of Stewardship, which, building on a previous segment looking at Identity, will explore the idea of caring for our bodies on behalf of their future owners. As part of that, participants will be invited to write a letter to their future selves, if they wish.

Hello, old dude…

I’m writing this, in my 55th year, trying to imagine what you’re aspirations might be as a 75-year-old. I hope you managed to celebrate your 75th with as many burpees as you can muster - I wonder, can you still churn out 1,000 of the the damn things, or have you made sensible cuts the this silly ritual you began when you turned 50?

I imagine you still aspire to stay active well into the next decade. Maybe you’re finally spending more time hiking in the mountains, something your younger self always dreamed of but struggled to prioritise. Maybe you live close to the mountains now. Did you ever get to spend chunks of time walking in the footsteps of Nietzsche around Sils Maria as you intended, or is that still a plan at the back of your mind?

I can’t truly know who you’ll become or what you’ll want to do with your life, but what I hope to give you is optionality: the widest possible range of choices. Maybe you’re still out kayaking or rollerblading, and I’m sure you’re still cycling. If you’re no longer going out running, I hope at least you’re enjoying your daily walks.

Part of what drives me to care for your wellbeing is my deep discomfort with the idea of being hospitalised and the fear of losing agency and self-sovereignty. I’ll make every effort to help you maintain a strong sense of dignity and self-reliance for as long as possible. I know how much you’ll hate depending on others, and our children won’t exactly relish the thought of wiping your backside if it ever comes to that.

Of course, I can’t guarantee that I’ll give you a body that’s in great shape; the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune can befall anyone at any time, so hopefully we manage to avoid any nasty accidents or severe illness.

I’ll be continuing to avoid processed foods that are full of sugar, seed oils, and glutinous refined wheat that leave me feeling sluggish and bloated. I’ll continue to exercise daily for as long as it energises my body - I’ll try to give you a body with a good lean muscle mass, with a strong and resilient skeletal system that is maintained through continual use. I’m conscious that I probably don’t stretch as much as I would like to and still spend too much time slumped over a damn laptop - something I will commit to remedying now that I’m intentionally thinking about the body you’ll recieve.

Alongside a strong and capable physical body, I hope to offer you a mind and spirit of energetic vitality. I’ll continue my memento mori contemplations, so that death won’t be something you fear, and you’ll be well prepared for the next great adventure of your soul. But if, in the end, a voidy nothingness is all that awaits, then I trust these reflections won’t be in vain and they’ll help ease your way to that final breath.

Thankfully, we both survived our twenty-something self, that reckless knob-head who drank too much, smoked too often, and lived on junk food with little thought for the future. Fortunately, he found his way out of all that. And somehow, with the boundless exuberance of youth, he still managed to stick to a daily exercise routine we’re deeply grateful for today.

So this is my gift to you for your 75th birthday. I hope you’ll trust in my deeply held conviction that I’ll do my utmost to deliver a fully functional and capable human body, from one careful owner, well maintained, and with a good few miles left on the clock for you to enjoy. I hope you’ll treat yourself to a nice beer and single malt tonight - say ‘cheers’ to your wife, assuming she still tolerates your foibles and those ridiculous threadbare flowery shirts you’re probably still wearing from 25 years ago.

You know that I’ve done all I can to set you up financially to be in a good place. It will be interesting to check in at 75 to see if things panned out the way we expected, and our restrained and patient long-term stance served us well. If so, then I hope you’re enjoying your quiet liberation from a life of worrying about money and are enjoying playing that grand piano you always wanted. I hope that my commitment to daily practice has given you the opportunity for continued musical creativity now that you have the time to kick back and let rip.

Enjoy your Equinox fast next week, it will be your 25th year of quarterly extended fasts, you’ll be coming up to your 100th fast, assuming it is still safe for you to do them, and you still find them rewarding. 100 extended fasts, what an achievement that will be to look back on - I wonder if people will still think you’re bonkers for doing them?

Take good care of this body so you can pass it onto its future owners in reasonable shape - I wonder what our 85-year-old self will do with it?

Thank you for reading

I have an online Health Mastery Programme which will be running for 12 weeks, starting the week of June 23rd, 2025. This will be a small group exploring various themes around developing a mindset to cultivate practices towards achieving lifelong health and fitness. The group will challenge you to think deeply about your own approach to health and will offer mutual support around any changes you are looking to make.

See Health Mastery Programme for further details and registration.