Writing Assignment: Write A Message To Yourself To Read One Hour From Now

by Randy Murray on August 29, 2014

Time travel is possible. You will not require a DeLorean and stolen plutonium. All you really need is a pen and paper.

Writing, one of the most remarkable human achievements, is something that we created thousands of years ago. It’s the ability to transmit information across time. You can press marks into a piece of wet clay or make drawings on a scraped animal hide. Or you can type your characters digitally on a screen.

And then wait. What you’ve written can be read (with luck and perhaps a handy Rosetta Stone) in the far and distant future. It’s time travel that works.

One of the funniest plays I’ve ever seen was first performed in 411 BCE. You want to literally fall on the floor laughing? Go see a production of Lysistrata.

And one of the most touching stories that I’ve ever read, Homer’s Iliad, was told, and then written down, far earlier. Gilgamesh The King comes from over 3,200 years ago.

It’s a very real form of time travel. It’s just one way, but it works. The information travels through time. It’s really quite astounding.

And you can do it, too.

For today’s assignment write a note to yourself to be read by yourself in one hour. You can pass information, remind yourself of something important, or explain something to your future self that you might forget in the coming moments.

Don’t take long with this assignment. Simply think of yourself in an hour and then write down what you’ll need to know.

You can also write to yourself in the past, but it’s unlikely that the you of the past will have any interest.

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