Will We Like What We See in Five Years?
If we were to meet ourselves in five years, would we like the person we had become? Or, as my friend Joe Kort asks, “Would the small child you once were look up to the adult you have become?” Everything, it seems, depends upon the choices we made and are making each moment of our lives.
There was a fascinating segment on the television program “Supernatural” recently in which the character Dean is transported to five years in the future so that he could see the dire consequences of not earlier making the “right” decision. The Dean of 2009 didn’t much like or respect who he was in 2014. He found his older self hardened and unscrupulous. His future-self explained that he was the way he was because of the choices that he had made in the past.
Some people believe that the world will end in December 2012. Assuming that they’re wrong, do we imagine we will be happy with ourselves in 2014? Will we be more generous than we are now or more miserly? Will we be more spiritual or will we be guided more by religious dogma? Will we be healthy or will our bodies have become more over-weight and more sluggish. Even without Armageddon, will we still be alive and if not, when we died will we have been pleased with the decisions we made, such as whether or not to text while driving, or to ending our marriage, or to coming out?
No matter what we do or don’t do now, we will be different in five years from the people we are today. Besides being older, we will be impacted by everything that happens in the world around us - the cost of food, Iran and Korea’s nuclear capabilities, who is elected as President in 2012, the passage of ENDA and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the death of loved ones, the birth of children, job security, reconciliations, and the development of new electronic gadgets, among others.
We can choose to try crystal meth or to stop drinking, to learn to scuba dive or to give up tennis, to travel to a third world country or to buy an RV.
The decisions we make every minute of every day - to eat that piece of chocolate, to watch that television program, to smell that flower — have made us and will make us who we are and what we will become.
That seems to put a lot of weight on every action and thought. It’s crazy, though, to feel stress over the decisions. Choosing to be stressed will also affect our physical and emotional health. But it’s also crazy not to be aware of the consequences of our behaviors or to take responsibility for our choices.
The most significant, life-altering decisions I have made in my life include coming out, choosing Ray as my life’s traveling companion, stopping drinking and smoking, responding to the opportunities to educate others about gay and transgender issues, embracing the wisdom of Buddhism and the Tao, accepting the inevitability of my death, and letting go of people who vex my soul. There are others, of course, but these come to mind quickly. Had I not made these choices in my life, today I would probably be an angry, alcoholic, cancer-ridden, closeted Catholic who, though terrified of death, counted on an afterlife to make up for the crappy, meaningless life I had lived surrounded by people who wanted me to feel guilty if I didn’t meet their needs.
But, gratefully, the child I once was is proud of and pleased with the adult I have become. I’m a very flawed person but I try hard to be loving, kind, thoughtful, generous, and principled. I readily acknowledge my faults and weaknesses and realize that it’s not a given that I will like and respect the person I am in five years. That will depend upon the choices I make between now and then, even the choice to say all of this.
