Meaningful Returns

Your present self doesn’t quite know what will make your future self truly happy and fulfilled, which makes this business of living a pretty tough one. We sort of go around doing things right now that our in-five-seconds-or-hours-or-months-or-years-self will appreciate and be grateful for, and this is natural and expected. But it’s never a slam dunk.

That fact can be really frustrating, the fact that guarantees you will at some point look back on what is now your present self but what will then be your past self and say, “What were you thinking???”

But this reality can also be freeing, in a sense, and I mean that in this way: by recognizing that all these sorts of present vs. future tradeoffs are fraught with what we might call “errors” or “mistakes” or “stumblings,” we ought to hold our tradeoff decisions a bit loosely, and give ourselves a healthy portion of grace when we inevitably uncover the errors and mistakes and stumblings. And we should, now in the present, consider carefully the things that have proven throughout humanity to bring joy and happiness, and maybe tune out some of the things that have not.