It was my 23rd birthday a few days ago, and I knew what that meant.
Not a birthday cake.
A letter to myself, from myself--in this case, from two years ago, which I had written on my 21st birthday.
By now, I've forgotten where I first got this idea from--all I know is it became a tradition since I was fifteen, because the first letter of this sort was from Fifteen to Twenty-One. I had to look at it for so many years before I could open it so I really ought to remember that.
Ever since then, every birthday that has gone past I continue the tradition of opening one letter and writing another. It used to be the funnest thing in the world, but gradually as the years go by I sometimes dread opening that letter because almost every year the same question (yes, I ask myself questions, it's one of the most pointless but most natural things to do when addressing your future self) is bound to be in there somewhere--"have you managed to get published yet?" Ouch.
Reading those letters gives you a strange sensation, like mental vertigo. You see at once how similar you still are to that person who wrote this letter (the contents of which you've clean forgotten by now, so it's the closest you can get to meeting your doppelganger) and how different. It helps you put age in a perspective. In one sense you've moved on and changed in many ways; I especially feel this in letters that were written before some significant life changing event. But in another sense it reinforces how getting older really isn't the way we tend to think it is--like playing a computer game--after a specific amount of tries (369 to be exact) we make it to the next level and unlock something for it. I think I grew up too much in awe of 'gorgors and jiejies' (literally, older brothers and sisters) such that I ended up with this unconscious assumption that reaching a certain stage meant you automatically increased in adultiness. Which should be a proper word, by the way. I find myself using it more and more as I get older.
Reading those letters, you're reminded what were your priorities then, and it's sometimes sobering to see how much you've forgotten, what has stopped being so important anymore, just as it is to see what's remained the same. How the future didn't turn out the way you expected. How things you once dreaded were now only distant memories. And as you put the letter down slowly and look around you, you briefly see yourself in this one moment for what it is, one point in your life that will soon join the many others behind it as you move on.