Dear Young Me, I am sending this letter back in time. I hope you get it. Tell everyone I said hello. Brush your teeth.

The main reason I’m writing is because the world is going to go nuts someday. And I mean totally, flipping nuts. I can’t even describe the level of nuttiness you’re about to experience.

But believe me, someday you will wake up and the current state of the world, and all its wacky human inhabitants will suddenly seem so screwed-up, you will feel like a giraffe.

This will be especially evident in the young generations that follow yours.

Certainly, young people have always differed from their elders, but with the current techno boom we are undergoing, young people will become a different species.

In generations past, the highest form of technology was the walkie-talkie radio in the handle-bar basket of your Schwinn. You bought this radio at the five-and-dime using a wad of crumpled cash from your piggy bank.

But in the future, there won’t BE piggy banks. There won’t be five-and-dimes. And there definitely won’t be many Schwinns.

Likewise, at one time, the highest aspiration of kidhood was merely to build a really cool fort. But there aren’t many forts being built today.

There was a recent study done. Researchers found that Americans of previous generations played outside often. In fact, a staggering 90 percent of American kids used to play outside. Today, the percentage falls somewhere around 20 percent.

Yesterday, for example, I was on a walk when I passed a group of kids, sitting on their porch. Each kid held his or her respective iPad, playing some kind of game; each kid was simultaneously texting on a secondary mobile device; each child wore massive, noise-cancelling, reality-blocking, soul-crushing headphones clamped tightly on his or her head.

And this is normal.

Young Me, they were completely isolated from the world surrounding them. They were in tune with nothing. They weren’t even talking to EACH OTHER.

I saw their dad watering some bushes with a garden hose. I waved hello as I walked by, but Dad didn’t see me. He was playing on his phone, too.

There will also be a drop in global empathy. This will occur within young people, old people, and all ages between. Humans will sort of forget what it’s like to be nice to others.

Researchers recently found that there has been a massive drop in empathy between the years 1973 and the current year. In short, people have forgotten what it means to put themselves in the shoes of others.

There will be mass shootings. There will be slanted headlines. You will never again watch television without seeing, at minimum, 1,327,982 pharmaceutical commercials.

Nobody will go to movie theaters anymore. Radio will die. Newspapers will disappear. Paper books will be considered archaic. Every day you turn on the news, it will seem like a cluster foxtrot.

But, oh, Young Me, that’s why I am writing to you.

Because no matter how off kilter the world seems now, this world has NEVER been normal. Read history and see for yourself.

There is nothing new under the burning noonday sun. All events that shock you, all the wars, famines, pestilence, hellish injustices, all things that grieve you, it’s all happened one-million-and-one times before.

This knowledge doesn’t make your reality less painful. Nor does it remove the sorrow of hard times. And it certainly doesn’t make injustice right.

But this knowledge will comfort you, and reassure you that, if you power down your device, and let the world go quiet for a moment, you will find something eternal. An eternal grace that lingers above you, accessible at all times. All you have to do is touch it.

This mercy predates the world. It will outlast the universe. It transcends the religion of man, and all his sacred buzzwords.

And what’s more, you can share this holy element with others who need it. And it will change the nature of your existence.

It’s called love.

Find it. Embrace it. Give it away. Love God. Love others. Love yourself. And for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, don’t forget to brush your teeth.