Me and my dear Aunt Fran making “puffers” — wet paper towel balls with food coloring. Circa 1996.

Three months ago, there’d been a big TikTok trend where people were “meeting their younger selves” for coffee. Inspired by a poem, the prompt would invite Current You to offer some words of wisdom to Younger You -- a 30 second confessional, usually set to a Mazzy Star track and a montage of grayscale coffee shop scenes.

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More often than not, Younger You gets told a version of this: It all works out. The dead-end job. The not-quite-right relationship. The painful friend breakup. “Be present, and don’t worry so much about the future,” the Older Yous urge.

This seems reasonable. After all, we can never have enough reminders of how cosmically significant we are, or how rarely our assume-the-worst, they-definitely-hate-me, I’m-going-to-die-alone delusions actually materialize.

And yet, as true as this all is, the trend doesn’t tell us how we actually worry less, and become more present. Nor does it reflect on the other side of this question: What would your younger self tell YOU over coffee?

This, I think, is a missed opportunity.

To be clear, I’m not talking about 18-year-old you, or even 28 year-old you. But 8-year old you—

covered in dirt clobs and colored markers, preoccupied by playground games and sand castle construction? They, I think, have the wisdom we could really use.

8 year-old you wouldn’t think to tell you not to overthink; they’d be too busy using their hands to spend time in their heads.

8 year-old you wouldn’t shame you for second guessing yourself; guessing is the only thing they know (“Are we there yet?”). And that’s just fine; when you’re a kid, uncertainty is the rule, not the exception.

8 year-old you is under no pretenses that digging up bugs or devising dance routines is any less worthy than poring over excel spreadsheets and hoping this email finds you well. (38 year-old you might be shocked to learn AI is more likely to come for the latter.)

But maybe most importantly, 8 year-old you doesn’t need a self-help bookshelf or blue checkmark influencer to remind you to be mindful—a state, defined by the concept’s originator, Harvard psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer as “what you’re doing when you’re having fun.”

I don’t mean to make it sound so simple, or suggest all of our 8 year-old selves had it so easy. That’s especially true today (New research finds kids today are much less happy than kids thirty years ago.)

But that only proves my point. This is not about age; this is about mindset. The older we get, I think, it becomes more important for us to unthink. To work less and play more. To abandon our false sense of control, and pick fun.

I was reminded of this last week, as one of the unlucky Newark airport passengers stranded with a seven hour delay. Most adults, myself included, sat around and huffed—groaning into the ambient lofi-lined halls about all the plans they’ll miss and bookings they’ll have butchered, trying desperately to get on alternative flights.

As hour six became hour seven, I finally gave up and pulled up a seat next to the only Newark airport establishment that isn’t trying to sell me something: the indoor playground.

The parents encircling the playground sat glued to their phones—furiously scanning for flight updates and filling out compensation forms. “For the love of God, can’t we just get there?” their heavy undereye-bagged faces screamed.

But the kids—who’d been there just as long as the parents —couldn’t be bothered. They were

preoccupied with slides and ladders. Ropes and mushroom-shaped obstacles. Tag games and new airport friends.

I sipped my coffee and watched, knowing I’d just met my younger self for coffee. And without saying anything, they told me everything I needed to know.

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An indoor playground in Barcelona airport.

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