Be here NOW!!!

Think about something you feel passionately about today. Now envision yourself 10 years from now. Do you feel the same way? Slightly different? Radically changed? A new study published in the January 4th journal, Science, asserts that most adults change significantly over a decade but when asked to predict their future selves, fail to recognize just how much change they will actually see. Huh?

According to an interview with Harvard psychology professor, Daniel Gilbert, in Health Day magazine, “People dramatically underestimate how different their future selves will be.” That got me thinking about my own life and how much I’ve changed over the last decade.

Ten years ago my political beliefs were strikingly…how to put this…different. But I think that has more to do with having and raising two children. Suddenly the whole “do what you feel” and “follow your bliss” approach to life seems to wither as you raise kids. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Or is it?

Teaching kids about right and wrong seems to make parents concretize their own belief systems in a way that’s hard to predict. The practicality of life, the ups and downs, the immense challenges that pop up unexpectedly, all of these change us, make us harder, less willing to trust the whimsical mysteries of nature. Well, not for everyone. But it’s worked that way for me.

I miss my more childlike view of the world. It was a view that allowed me to trust in the goodness of people, to always follow my heart, to imagine that a spiritual force greater than myself was guiding my every step. Nowadays I feel consumed by the violence in our streets, the senseless genocide occurring around the globe, the carelessness people exhibit towards their neighbors and family. But I sure didn’t see this coming. I thought I’d always be wide-eyed and open to the possibilities of life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a fairly positive gal. I still find ways to express my creative spirit each and every day. I try really hard to believe that life has a purpose and that somehow I’m on a path, albeit circuitous, towards discovering that purpose. But I feel a constant weight, a heaviness, that rests on my shoulders as I meander through life these days that wasn’t there a decade earlier. That makes me wonder about where I’m heading and what life will look like in the next ten years. Maybe I’ll make a total 180 degree personality swerve and end up more like the bohemian, free-spirited person I used to be. Or maybe I’ll do a full 360, grow a goatee and pursue my dormant dream of becoming a Krill fisherwoman in Antarctica.

Daniel Gilbert explains that people are just not very good at predicting who they’ll be in the future. He tells the New York Times, “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin. What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

Kind of depressing, no? I mean I hate to think that in ten years I’ll look back with embarrassment over my funky fashion foibles or trendy hair coif. Because looking back now, I can see that the whole Jennifer Aniston Friends “do” wasn’t my best look. But at the time, I thought I was red-carpet ready.

So we can’t accurately project ourselves into the future and we’re pretty much assured to be horrified by who we were in the past. Sounds like a lose-lose for all of us. Guess that’s as good a reason as any to live in the present.

Happiness is…

Happiness is…a warm puppy…or whatever you make it!

I heard something interesting on the radio the other day about happiness. Happiness, the philosophical talk show host explained, was different depending on your stage of life. He went on to say that when you are young, happiness comes mostly from thinking about your future. Then, in middle age, it comes largely from being in the moment and living life, often quite hectically, in the present. Old age finally, finds happiness predominately from memories of the past.

I haven’t been able to shake this concept. I find it sad and disturbing. Mostly because I think it’s true. I don’t want this part of my life, where I’m caught busily racing from present moment to present moment, to ever end. I am happy where I am. Yes, I’m stressed out, overwhelmed and run ragged 98% of the time. But I love my kids, my family, my husband, my work, my creative time. I’d like life to go on like this indefinitely. The thing is, I know it wont. I feel the present slipping away from me with each tick of the clock. Honestly, it’s a curse to be so hyper aware of time’s passage. My ardent attempts to suck every bit of marrow out of each passing moment often feels more like a futile attempt to build a lasting sand castle right in the middle of high tide. Try as I may, failure is inevitable.

I remember at the very end of my paternal grandfather’s life, we were all sitting around his bedside celebrating his birthday. He was very old and frail by then, a mere shell of his former self. As the cake emerged with a scattering of representative candles, my maternal grandmother, the only other elder remaining in our clan, posed this question defeatedly to my grandpa. “Oh, Irwin,” she sighed, “Where have all the good years gone?” He smiled weakly, looked around at his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. and with the same sparkle we’d seen in his younger eyes said, “They’ve been replaced by better ones.”

I will never forget that moment. Somehow, my grandfather had managed to keep his consciousness focused on the beauty of what was right in front of him. He had escaped the trap of only living in the glory of the past. As we age, we can lose sight of the good that stands before us and idealize earlier times when we’d been untouched by loss, pain and trauma.

The truth is, there will always be moments of joy, beauty and wonder, no matter what our age. We just can’t ever stop looking for them.

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I enjoy being a girl

I glimpsed an awesome scene in my future this morning. We were late for school, as usual, and I suddenly remembered that the gas gauge was so close to empty our arrival anywhere beyond the neighborhood Circle K was improbable. I detoured towards the gas station and pulled up alongside a pump.

My ten year old son, Levi, immediately unbuckled and leapt out of the car. “I’ve got it, mom,” he announced. “Your credit card, please.”

At first I was stunned. Sure he’d reluctantly helped me fill up the gas tank in the past. But on all of those occasions, his willingness to even unscrew the gas cap came with a heavy sigh and insolent eye roll. Today he was actually eager to fuel the tank.

I handed him my credit card and watched with awe and admiration as he swiped it, entered our zip code and selected my usual gas grade. After filling the tank and returning my card, he hopped back in the car and buckled up, ready to hit the road and head off to school.

It was then that I had my vision. In just a few more years, I will never have to fill up my gas tank again. I have two strapping young boys whose father extols the virtues of gentlemanliness and chivalry. They always want to help me carry in the groceries. They fight over who gets to wash my car. They wouldn’t think of allowing me to walk through a door I had opened all by myself. And suddenly it hit me. This is great!

After all those years of waiting on them hand and foot, feeding them, bathing them, carting around an overflowing amount of parent paraphernalia and stocking my purse with a virtual grocery store of healthy snacks and drinks, I was going to be free — and soon. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was only a matter of time before I would take my place as rightful Queen of this family. Never again will I have to carry my own luggage on family vacations! No more lugging in backpacks and awkwardly arranged school shadow boxes at the end of the day. No. I was finally going to be treated like a lady, not a work horse.

I shared my epiphany with my husband this afternoon. He grunted something judgmental about feminism and Betty Friedan. “I’m a post-modern feminist,” I quipped. “I believe that chivalry and feminism can peacefully co-exist. Besides, I’ve never advocated that women should have equal rights. Rather, it’s always been my belief that we are entitled to special rights.” And then I smiled coquetishly and waltzed away humming a noted feminist tune from that good ol’ Rogers and Hammerstein musical treatise on equal rights, “Flower Drum Song.”

“I’m strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl… like… me.”