A Letter to Myself

At the school reunion, twenty years after graduation, Ana didn’t expect to feel anything except boredom. She had a good job, a small flat and a calendar full of meetings. Everything was fine. Then the headteacher stood up and announced that each former student would receive a sealed envelope: a letter they had written to themselves at sixteen.

Ana laughed with the others, but she held hers carefully. She remembered nothing about it. She went out to the car park, sat on a low wall and opened it. The handwriting was round and a little too confident. “Dear Ana,” it began. “By now you are probably famous. If not, I hope you are at least happy.”

The letter listed ten wishes. Ana read them with a half-smile that slowly disappeared. Learn to sail. Visit a country where she couldn’t read the signs. Adopt a dog with silly ears. Play the cello badly in public. She had done none of them. She wasn’t even sure she remembered when she had stopped wanting things.

The last line was different: “Don’t wait until you’re ready. Nobody is ever ready.” Ana read it three times. Then she took out her phone and, before she could talk herself out of it, searched for a sailing school. There was a beginners’ course starting in two weeks. Her thumb stayed above the button for a long minute.

“Ana! We’re taking the group photo!” someone shouted from the door. She pressed the button. The confirmation email arrived while she was smiling for the camera, and for the first time all evening, the smile was real.

On the way home, she bought a notebook and began a new letter, to be opened in ten years. She started with one line: “Dear Ana, by now you can sail.”