Don’t hang onto the future; it’s going to change anyway
“The future you have, tomorrow, won’t be the same future you had, yesterday.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
Everyone’s favourite American nihilist novelist (he wrote Fight Club, natch) popped out this observation into a 2007 book called Rant, which purported to be an oral history of a character named Buster Casey. I never got around to it, so my knowledge of the book is very modern: just what other people have said or written.
But I like the insight of this line, and how our sense of the future is malleable. I’m not sure if that sense can change that much in just one day, but certainly as we track our lives, the future we imagine growing up is wildly different when we’re in 20s, when we hit middle age, and so on.
And yet there’s a track of time, isn’t there?
Some months ago, I was talking with a younger colleague who was fretting a bit about her career path and whether it was coming together the right way. I told her that the decisions she was making may feel like a zig here and a zag there, but said that when she looks back, her path will make sense. What might feel like a detour or a pause in the moment could be something formative and even foundational.
I was told something similar years and years ago and that advice stuck with me. My own life took some turns I might not have wanted (a beloved newspaper folded when I was in my 20s, there were newsroom cuts in the Nineties, all that fun), but as time evolved — as the future became the present and eventually the past — everything made more sense. I carried some of this into the training and coaching work that I have done.
Now, as I get used to being in my 60s, I’m not certain what my sense of the future is. These indeed are key questions in my life: what kind of future do I want for myself? To what extent can I engineer it the way I want it? What’s realistic and desired?
Perhaps the future will be the time when I try to find these answers.
By the way, I don’t think Chuck Palahniuk is as much of a nihilist as the consensus often states. Consider this excerpt from an undated interview with The Talks:
Mr. Palahniuk, do you think that the world is getting better or worse?
Better. Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they’re all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.