Someone sent me a photo last week. It was me, about fifteen years ago. And I looked good. Not “good for someone who has since surrendered to gravity” good. Actually good. Fit. Hair that was black rather than its current negotiations with grey.
My first reaction was something between pride and grief.
Because I remember at that time I didn’t think I looked good. Not even close. I thought I was out of shape. I obsessed over things that, looking back at now were completely imaginary problems. I walked around carrying this low-grade, constant dissatisfaction with how I looked, how fit I was, what I weighed. I wasted years being quietly embarrassed about a body that future me would like very much.
The cruellest trick my brain pulls on me is that it runs a permanent negative filter that shaves my opinion of myself down to something insigificant. I look in the mirror and see the version that hasn’t done enough yet, hasn’t achieved enough, isn’t quite there yet. And the bitter irony is that the filter doesn’t switch off with time. Future me will look at a photo of current me in fifteen years and think “oh, you looked alright.” Current me is sitting here right now finding reasons to disagree with that.
So what if I tried to look at myself the way my future self will? Not with delusion, not with toxic positivity and a gratitude journal. Just with the simple, uncomfortable recognition that right now, at this exact moment, I am probably better than I’m giving myself credit for. I am as young as I will ever be again, as capable, as full of whatever it is I’m quietly undervaluing. The version of me that exists today is the one future me will look at and say “why didn’t you enjoy that more?” And it won’t be the grey hair he notices. It’ll be the energy. The options. The time.
I’m not saying ignore the things that need work. The point is that the relentless future-focus, the one that says I’ll feel good about myself once I’ve lost the weight, got the promotion, finished the project, is a lie. A comfortable one, but a lie. The filter just moves the goalposts.
I looked at that photo for a long time. Thought about what I’d say to that version of me.
Probably: “You look fine. Stop it.”
And then I thought about what I’d want my future self to say about this version of me. Same thing.
The present me deserves the same generosity I apparently only extend to my past…. so from future me to current me, you don’t have to wait to become better, you already are.
Javvad Malik 