The John Hancock Building in the Clouds

What would your “ten years younger self” say to you today? Well, I got to find out. Ten years ago I was finishing college, unmarried, full of dreams, and I had two great friends named Tiffany and Chelsea. We decided to write letters to ourselves and to each other that we would open in ten years—the date we chose was March 24th, 2017.
The letter idea came after a fun night of food at the Loring Pasta Bar in Minneapolis, and then we went to the 9th floor of the Guthrie Theatre to write letters to the person we would be in ten years… A month later we decided to write letters to each other as well to open on March 24th, 2017.

Every year or two over the last ten years, Tiff or Chels would mention “March 24th, 2017!” and we would smile and dream. Time moved faster and faster, and we arrived on the awaited date last month. We had thought we would meet in Minneapolis, but none of us lived there anymore, so we met in Chicago where two of us live, and Chelsea drove over her from Iowa to visit her Dad and us.

We moved on from the 9th floor of the Guthrie Theatre (“our” cool spot ten years ago) to the 96th floor of the John Hancock building (that is 87 stories taller!) At the Signature Lounge, we got a table, talked, and then pulled out our ten year old letters! Between us we had moved almost 20 times, but we all protected our letters (by keeping them with important papers). We decided to read each of the letters out loud, and the resulting inspiration, joy, and gratitude surprised me. It felt like we had church up there in that lounge. The words we had written to each other were still true–the encouragement, love, and kindness expressed through those letters was timeless.

Each of us have grown and matured, and many of our dreams that we wrote about in our letters have come to pass. We are not as starry-eyed and idealistic as we were in our twenties, but the faith we expressed in those letters is inspiring and nudges me to continue growing in my faith! We cried, hugged, and ate lots of food while talking about what we had written.

We have written new letters to open on March 24th, 2027, and who knows what will happen in THESE ten years?

~Mary Hope
P. S. The notecards I used to write my new letters are from Trees of Transition Cards:  Photo Greeting Cards
P. S. S. If you want to see more about Chicago Architecture, such as the John Hancock Building check out:

Copyright 2017