Opinion piece by Barbara Lee
We've all seen the question a hundred times: what would you tell your ten-years-ago self? What advice would you give? What worries would you wave away? It's a comforting thought experiment — the idea that we could go back, smooth out the rough edges, and fix a few things. But we can't. The past is closed. We can make sense of it, but we can't rewrite it.
The future, though, is a different story. We actually have a say in that — not total control, but real influence. So I've started finding it far more useful to ask a different question: what will my future self, ten years from now, think of the choices I'm making today?
My future self isn't some imaginary character. She's a very real consequence of what I do right now.
That shift in perspective has quietly changed the way I make decisions. Before I commit to something — or avoid something — I ask myself one simple thing:
Will my future self be grateful for this?
One of the most concrete changes I've made is that I started moving my body regularly. Not a dramatic lifestyle overhaul — just building movement into my everyday life. Not because I expect to see results tomorrow, but because I know that in ten years, my body won't be starting from the same place it is now. Energy, stamina, and health don't vanish overnight, but they're shaped by small, daily choices. I want my future self to feel like she inherited something good — not like she's only doing damage control.
The same thinking is what finally got me to start seeing a therapist. I put it off for a long time, always finding something more urgent, more pressing, more convincing as an excuse. Then I realized: the way I respond to situations, the way I handle relationships, the patterns I keep repeating — none of that stays neatly in the present. It follows me forward. If I don't work on it now, I'll still be running the same loops years from now. And there was nothing appealing about that. So I'd rather invest the energy today to make tomorrow a little lighter.
I've also started thinking differently about my career. Not just what makes sense in the short term or what looks like the logical next step, but whether it's actually compatible with what I value. Whether the life I'm building is sustainable over the long haul. Because you can push hard, make compromises, and tell yourself "it'll get better later" — but at some point, that catches up with you. I don't want to look back in ten years and realize I ended up in a life I never actually chose.
Time with my daughter
The most emotional part of all this, though, comes back to my daughter. Time works differently with her. Some days it drags; other days it moves at a speed that genuinely frightens me. And while I'm doing my best to keep up with everything else in life, I keep coming back to one thought: these years cannot be repeated.
So I'm trying to be truly present with her. Not just physically there, but actually paying attention. Playing, talking, and yes — collecting every hug and every kiss. Because I know that in ten years, this version of us won't exist anymore. She'll have different needs, our dynamic will have shifted, and while that will be beautiful in its own way, this particular season will be gone.
I don't want to look back and wonder whether I made the most of it. I don't want to miss the small, soft moments and realize I had the chance to soak them all in — and let them slip by anyway.
None of this means every decision I make is perfectly conscious or wisely forward-thinking. I still make mistakes. I still procrastinate. I still take the easier path sometimes. But having that question somewhere in the back of my mind — will my future self be glad I did this? — changes a lot. It gives direction. And maybe that's the most we can do for the person we're slowly becoming.
