hopes – Deb Sinness, Author

The first weekend in the new year, my daughter and I opened the time capsule we had buried at the dawn of the new millenium.

It’s funny the stories we tell ourselves. In a previous post about the time capsule, I described going to the cabin to bury it on New Year’s Eve. When we opened the time capsule, taped to the cover was a baggie with the letters we had written ourselves and a four page cover spread from the San Luis Obispo Tribune dated January 1, 2000. Unless they published early, we hadn’t gone to the cabin until New Year’s Day.

So what else was inside? Just as we remembered it, an old Sony cell phone we used for emergencies only. Note the handy quick reference card tucked inside the zippered case. But why didn’t we include the charger?

In a little box marked “Open Me First” was a whole lot of nothing, insignificant trinkets.

“Mom, why did we pack all this junk?”

“I have no idea. What were we thinking?”

There were some old CDs, a cassette tape, a program from a middle school play my daughter stage managed, our custom goth Christmas card, keychains, and Gidget the stuffed dog who was the ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell’ mascot back in the day.

Most interesting were the letters we each wrote to our future selves. The past two months I’ve struggled with the reality that 20 years have gone by in the blink of an eye. It’s hard to wrap my head around all the changes that have occurred in the span of those years. Changes we could never have guessed would happen to us.

Then, there were the two poems that were published in Unity Magazine in 1999, the first sales of my fledgling writing career. My letter talked about finally knowing what I want to do with my life…be a writer. Eight months later we would move from California to Michigan. Then life got in the way. Finally, 19 years after I wrote that letter, I reconnected with my writer self and last year I had my marathon story published.

It’s taken me over a month to write this post because the reality that I may not be here in another 20 years has rendered me mute. The mean spirit of our current reality makes me ponder whether that’s a bad thing. On the other hand, I’m not going down without a fight.

When writing about my life at age 25 for an English 101 class at Mira Costa College, I wrote, “I want to pass hot-dogging down a ski slope when I’m in my 90s.” I thought maybe I could will my body to ignore the inevitable decline of aging. My arthritic joints tell me I’ve not been so lucky.

My letter included the following poem I wrote to my future self about aging:

Yield to the seasons of life.
Gracefully embrace the wisdom
of passing years, while ignoring
disappointments and regrets
in the past.

Be thankful and grateful
for all that you have
and all that you are.
For in the end,
memories are all
you have left.

A memorable moment ~
a memorable millenium ~
a wonderful life.

Some words from my letter have never been more true. My letter ended with “I’ve always been a late bloomer and only now am I coming into my own…I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and living your dream.”

I am indeed.

It’s almost time to open up the time capsule I buried with my family on the precipice of the 21st Century. When I broached the subject of opening it with my daughter, we talked about all the ways our lives have changed in the 20 years since we carefully packed it with things we wanted to remember. Our lives today look nothing like what we imagined when we sat in our off-grid California cabin and wrote letters to our future selves.

Photo at the center of the vision board I did 10 years ago

A vision board, on the other hand, is not the same as a time capsule. I first learned about vision boards in the early 1980s while taking a Women in Management course during my undergraduate years at California State University, Fullerton. We were to clip images and words from magazines that we were attracted to and bring them to class along with scissors, glue, and posterboard.

On vision board day, the professor instructed us to turn our posterboards over and write “My life in five years, <date>.” At the time, I was 27, divorced, going to school on the GI bill, and renting an apartment near campus. Interesting, I’ll play along, I thought while arranging the items I brought in.

I looked through more magazines to fill in the hopes and dreams I had for myself. I pictured myself with: a challenging career; married to a handsome man with a son, a daughter, a cat, and dog; and a beautiful home in the suburbs with a new car in the garage and a grand piano in the living room. I remember thinking it was a fun exercise, but I couldn’t imagine much use for it.

One day while cleaning more than six years later, I saw the vision board tucked behind my credenza. I pulled it out to my amazement, with the exception of a son and a dog, everything on that vision board had come true! Was it luck? Or was it the power of intention I had set in motion years earlier? I’ve created other vision boards over the years that have been equally as powerful…and I still have that grand piano.

My daughter recently asked if I wanted to create another time capsule with this new year, new decade. I’m hesitant. I’ll be 84 in another 20 years, so I may not be around when it’s time to open. But I’m definitely planning to do another vision board and this time, with a focus on my dreams and intentions for retiring from my day job. Who knows when that will happen…but I want to leave nothing to chance.

Never underestimate the power of dreams and intentions.