Planning for the future is a funny thing. We’ve all got ideas for what we’d like to do. Maybe you’ve got a job you want (or want to quit). Or a degree you’d like to finish. Or a book you’d like to write. Me? I’d like to spend a month in Ireland, living in a van and surfing. The food there is terrific. The people are great. The surfing is world class. I heard they have beer.
It’s something I’d like to do someday, which means that it will never happen.
See, thinking too much about the future is a waste of time, for the sole reason that it’s the future. By definition, it never arrives — by the time the future gets here, it’s the present.
This all seems very circuitous and semantic, except that it’s at the center of why we never seem to get anything done, or achieve those faraway goals. It’s like Steinbeck said about socialism in America, that it never caught on because “we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” We tend to think of the future as already clinched, or that it will somehow be different than today. But in order to plan for the future, first we need to plan for the present.
See, the trip to Ireland sounds great. I’ve got a very clear, very romantic vision of what that month would look like. On the other hand, I have no plane ticket. I have no chunk of time blocked off, no money set aside, and no real idea of an itinerary. Also I don’t know how to surf. The trip is an idea, which so long as it exists safely in an intangible future, may remain nebulously construed and perfect.
It will never, however, happen.
It will never happen as long as it exists in the future (because like we said before, the future, categorically, never arrives). In order for me to head to Ireland to live the surf bum dream, it needs to happen today. Right now. And if I don’t fly out today, then I need to move some element of the trip to today. And another element to tomorrow. The trip itself needs to take place in the present. Maybe that’s buying a plane ticket. Maybe it’s setting aside a few bucks. Maybe is figuring out how to surf. But until something happens today, well, it hasn’t happened yet.
I know that this sounds a bit like navel gazing. Of course big trips and life changes require planning, and that planning can take weeks, months, years. Some might argue that planning an expedition is the best part. I would argue that planning the trip is as much a part of it as boarding a plane or taking the first paddle stroke. In addition to being rewarding (and necessary), it moves the future into the present. This makes whatever “it” is real and no longer hypothetical.
This is bigger than flying to Europe to be homeless.
It’s easy to dream about quitting a job you hate, or getting out of a bad relationship, or writing that novel you’ve got banging around in your head. But by thinking about the future as something that has yet to arrive we’re able to put off making changes indefinitely. The fact is that the future is here, right now. What are you doing to make it better?
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My friend, if you want to go, go. You’ll never be satisfied until you do. You may not be satisfied if you go. It’s still worth it.
On a side note I’d like to do the Mongol Ralley in three years. Interested?
Thanks Mark! Schemes are in the works. As for the side note . . . yes.