What the Future Won’t Tell You

I recently had a chance encounter in an airport with a friend I hadn’t seen in almost a decade. I passed him in the concourse then wandered back until I found him seated at his departure gate.

Over the years, we’ve kept in touch peripherally on social media. We were great friends.

Back then.

When I approached him, he stood up, and we embraced.

We’re still good friends just of a different kind.

Back then, the future never called. It never told me I would drift away from that friend when our lives went in different directions abruptly. There wasn’t any warning.

It just happened.

The reality is that we could have maintained our friendship if both of us had put in the effort.

Life happens.

The population of the speck we call home, by some estimates, is about to hit 8 billion. Even with so many, the variables and perspectives involved in a single life are so many that there is an infinite opportunity for unique experiences.

In that respect, we really are all unique.

But our uniqueness doesn’t separate us by much. Your unique experience may be almost indistinguishable from the experience of another. Separated by space and time, however, you will likely never encounter your experiential doppelgänger.

Even though you can all rightly claim uniqueness, you aught not be dismissive about what you can learn from the folks a little further down the road than you are.

There are many instances where you can learn something valuable from the experience of another if you’re willing to pay attention. Their experiences are the closest thing you will ever get to glimpsing your own future.

Consider this: you’re in your thirties and you’re happily partnered with 1.5 children and 2.5 fur babies. Even though you know fast food is not really a healthy choice (for the most part), you’re busy so you opt for dining out more than a few times a week.

One day, you’re sitting in the airport concourse and a large man with excessive body fat stops you. You can see the pain in his face as he struggles to walk.

The only words he says as he points to his stomach: “too much fast food.”

The future didn’t warn him. It didn’t tell him that present choices created future realities.

I rarely sleep enough. I am, in fact, chronically sleep-deprived. Many studies done in recent years link long-term sleep deprivation to later health problems.

But my future self isn’t calling to warn me. It’s easy to be dismissive when it’s not my current reality.

Tomorrow, I’ll change.

Do you say that to yourself as often as I do?

Your future won’t tell you anything until it’s too late to do anything about it, but you’re surrounded by living examples — struggling and thriving — of the actual outcomes created by yesterday’s choices.

It’s true that you only live once. Your choices are yours to make. For my part, I think it’s time for a change.