“The best things in life are the people we love, the places we’ve been, and the memories we’ve made along the way.”
Creating memories is priceless, and reliving them over again is a gift. The truth is that human memory is unreliable.
Short-term memories last only seconds to hours. Long-term memories last for years but are often miss recalled or forgotten altogether.
Giving ourselves the ability to go back in time and remember what our lives were like ten, fifteen, or twenty years prior is incredible.
This is where a time capsule comes into play. Physical items and experiences that haven’t run through our minds in years flood back into our minds.
Memories of ourselves and our forgotten lives come back to life with just a prod of the memory bank. Experiences that were near and dear to you individually and shared with others become vivid visions in your thoughts.
A life lost in time rushes back at the reopening of a simple capsule. A little memory safe deposit box. Almost like you’ve taken a time machine back in time.
“Sometimes I wish I could go back to my childhood and capture all those happy memories.”
Reliving these moments all over again is the beauty of a time capsule. You get to relive the past year as you’re putting it together and then relive it again years later.
Choose a Container for Your Capsule:
You can use any container that you want. Some things to think about would be what you’ll be putting in it, where you’ll be storing it, and how many years you plan on doing this.
If you plan on doing this from the day your kids are born to eighteen or out of college, you’ll want to go with a smaller container. You’ll have to store these, and twenty years of containers can take up some space, depending on how big they are.
What Goes into a Time Capsule:
You can put anything in it as long as it will last the test of time. If your child’s favorite treat is a doughnut, write that on the list instead of including an actual doughnut. A box with food that’s been sitting won’t be fun to open years later.
The capsule is meant to paint a picture of your life at that time.
List of Your Life
- Current fashion trends (include the clothes)
- Favorite Movie
- Favorite Color
- Favorite Book (include the book)
- Favorite Food
- Favorite Treat (include an empty wrapper)
- Favorite Toy (include the toy)
- Favorite Sports Teams (include a shirt, hat, keychain, etc.)
- Best Friend (list their phone number)
- Favorite Activity
- Music that you listen to and how you listen to it
- Goals (1, 5, 10, 15, 20 year)
- Predictions of the future when the capsule will be opened
- Technology that you use (ex: cell phone, thumb drive / include it)
- Major Life Events from that year
- List of prices (cars, houses, clothes, food, technology, vacations)
- Favorite places visited
- Family Traditions
- Favorite Restaurant (what do you order?)
- Height/Weight
You can also include other lists and physical items:
- Newspaper clippings from that month/year
- School art projects
- School papers
- Photos from that year
- Headshots
- Letter to your kids
- Letter to your parents
- Letter to your future self
- Your bucket List
Closing the Capsule:
Now that you have everything included, close it up and make sure it’s secure. Hide it in a good spot where you will remember, but it won’t tempt people to open it.
On the outside of the capsule, write the date you closed it up and the date you’ll open it. You can set the timeline for whatever you wish. One year, five years, ten years, twenty years or more.
The longer you wait, the more exciting and nostalgic it will be when you open it.
Opening the Capsule:
My family sets our timelines for ten years. We started when my daughter was three, and my son was five. If we put one together every year until my daughter is eighteen and open them every year starting at thirteen, we’ll be opening them until they are twenty-eight and thirty.
That seems pretty exciting to me. Maybe we’ll keep it going beyond that. It may become a family tradition that then includes their kids.
I don’t know how far this will go, but I’m very excited about the years ahead when we get together and laugh about who we were and what our lives looked like ten years prior.
“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
L.M. Montgomery
