I have been preparing a cold brew and overnight oats every night so that I can enjoy it in the morning. I do not know why I haven’t done this consistently before. I am always grateful for the meal and the coffee in the morning. In the past, I would have woken up groggy from not getting enough sleep, gone to the coffee shop, bought an expensive coffee and sometimes some greasy sandwich. After consuming it, I would have felt guilty and even more groggy. I hated my past self for putting me through this. My relationship with different versions of myself was all out of whack.

I think this idea of having different versions of the self is everywhere. Freud had his Ego, Superego, and Id. Even modern psychologists like Daniel Kahneman talk about system A and system B brains. We have ourselves in the office, ourselves at home, with acquaintances, and with that one friend who seems to bring out someone completely different. In this blog, I would like to talk about different temporal versions of yourself.

We are constantly changing. Our cells get replaced, our minds change, we move places, and we go through many relationships throughout our lives. My statement, “I was once a kid, and I will one day be an old man (if I survive).” is only considered a fact because a thin veil of memory connects me to all these stages of life, and actions I did in the past affect me in the future. A more factual statement would be that I remember some of the experiences of a young ten-year-old Neeserg, and he greatly impacted my life like no other individual has before; I will also similarly impact my older self, and he will remember me for it. This statement is a mouthful, and we tend to say that I was once young and will be one day old.

What am I getting at? Well, these days, when I make a cold brew for myself at night so I can enjoy it in the morning, I have been thinking of it as a gift from my past self to me. Working out and looking after my health has been also a similar thought process. I imagine future Neeserg thanking me and appreciating me for the work I am doing. Being mindful of the now and meditating, I am learning to appreciate myself in the present. I am trying to frame this self-improvement as an act of compassion.

It reminds me of the part in the book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Robert Shapolsky describes encountering a monk and asking if he ever stopped meditating because his knees hurt. The monk replied, “Sometimes I’ll stop sooner than I planned, but not because it hurts; it’s not something I notice. It’s as an act of kindness to my knees.” Sometimes, it’s helpful to frame whatever you are trying to do in life not as a desire but as an act of kindness to the future self.