When my father passed away, I lost a best friend, a mentor, a fellow adventurer, and a source of philosophical guidance that helped me through the most difficult eras of my life. There is not a day that passes in which I do not reflect on his wisdom and the lessons he instilled. He made it clear that I must always “trust my compass” and follow it diligently even when the course it defines takes me through turbulence and torment.
In his absence, I often speak to myself out loud, as I take long walks in nature, or places that are far removed from the influence of the world around me. I’m sure those I’ve passed on trails and paths mistook my dialogue for insanity (or maybe they were correct in their observation).
These discussions often lead me to realizations born of introspection, or to feasible solutions to the persistent obstacles I confront in my personal and professional life. They typically evolve (or digress) into debate with the entity I consider my future self.
I strive to think in consideration of how my actions and choices in the present will contribute to the life of my future self. Those thoughts are mostly existential, physical, financial, and ethical in context. To what end does this modestly maniacal behavior serve me? If anything, it affords a sense of continuity between who I was, who I am, and who I aspire to be.
To consider how your choices in the present will shape your future grants a diluted sense of control, in what is inherently an unstable and volatile current state of being.
There are few who do not reflect on their past and consider what they could have done, or what they should have done, to improve where they are today. It is by that same reasoning that I weigh the future, and how I would like to exist in it, based on the choices I make now.
If you were to benefit your future self, if you were to do that version of yourself a genuine favor by making a choice whose rewards may not materialize for many years to come, what would you do? What investments would you make to ensure that your future self exists in a better state than your current self? What is the context of that choice for you, specifically? Would it be to afford them a financial benefit? Would it be to afford them a physical benefit? Would you offer them some salient wisdom based on a mistake you’ve made – one that you still desire to avoid should circumstances present themselves again?
We could never know the true repercussions of the choices we make in the present, because there are too many stochastic elements that affect the future. But in the context of benefiting your future self, weighing the antecedents and consequences of your actions forces a reflection on how you arrived to where you are. We are all the product of our choices, our mistakes, our investments of time and experience. And to that end, we are in a constant state of transition and change. To embrace such a concept is often the most difficult philosophical endeavor we can endure.
So if you were to walk with yourself in an isolated place, that is, to stride alongside the future version of yourself for a brief interlude at the edge of time – what wisdom would you confide to them? What warnings would you impart? What sense of assurance or confidence would you provide to them? To distill a single message would be extremely difficult, but if you think in the context of a conversation, knowing that your shared ambition is to improve the quality of your life and the sanctity of your mind – what would you offer?
Consider what it would feel like to walk beside the future version of yourself, to deliver them an irrefutable and transcendent reminder of where you are now. And then, each day going forward, hold yourself accountable to make choices that ensure your future self has the resource and opportunity to live a meaningfully better life than you are, right now.
I miss my father every day, but I suspect the voice I argue with on those trails and paths, borrows more than a little, from his.
