The idea of a time capsule has always been intriguing to me. If I were responsible for storing a handful of today’s important items to be opened in 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now, what would I include? That is a difficult question to answer.

Back when I was in college, I found my 4 best friends. We met on the first day of move-in weekend as freshmen and melded into each others’ lives seamlessly. We’ve attended weddings, military commissions, births, deaths, and the large and small moments in between for each other. They are the people who make me who I am. But I digress.

In college, these girls and I began a New Year’s tradition of memorializing the year just passed and wishing big dreams for the year to come. For days leading up to our rendezvous, we each reflected on the year we were saying good-bye to. What did we enjoy? What did we want to remember? What were the one or two things we did not want to forget about that year? The task to complete before the rendezvous was to find an item or two to store in our “time capsule,” which was really just an old tin box from childhood. The items we selected could not be discussed with anyone; no one knew what we were storing away for memorialization.

At the appointed hour, the 5 of us met for dinner and celebrated us. We celebrated being another year older, another year wiser, another year more beautiful, and another year closer to graduating from college. After dessert, each of us placed our wrapped, chosen items into the tin box and smirked as we hypothesized what the others were placing into the box. Before sealing the tin for 365 days, we took a few minutes to write a love note to our future selves offering advice, reminders, and wishes for what would transpire in the coming year.

Every year we meet again around the time of Christmas and New Year’s. We bring the item or items we’ve chosen to represent the previous 12 months. We write a love note to self. And we enjoy each others’ company. One day in the future, we will open the tin to take out those items we’ve stored for the past decades. I am sure we will laugh, we will cry, and we will ask ourselves why we chose such inane objects. But more than anything else, we will remember the years of our lives. We will remember what makes us who we are.

So I share this with you because it is never too late to start your time capsule. It is never too late to capture today’s moments and make lofty plan for the future. And, it will be a great celebration the day you decide to walk down memory lane with your tin box and the frozen-in-time items.