My dearest future-self,
I need to ask you to be careful. I need you to be willing to consider all of the reasons you are doing, what you are doing now. And to avoid wishing your present self was spending her time doing something different. Something else you think she should be doing. Instead, I want you to think about all of the things that are happening, that she is doing now. And how each of them is crucial to living that "one wild and precious life" (1). And be thankful. To remember that you need every single one of those things. To remember that they are all important. That they are all a part of you finding your truth and living your truth. All parts. All of the time(s).
Please let your present-self. Live in her present. To be present. To have presence. In time. Through time. With. Time.
Because future self. You don't even exist yet. You are a made up self. A very demanding and loud figment of my imagination. My consciousness. My ability to think beyond this moment. Up in my head. Away from all the real-things. The now-things. The awake-things.
Alan Watts once said, "...the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a correspondingly dim sense of the present. In other words we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are out weighted by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable."
Do you see future-self? How you must be careful with me? How much power you have over my existence in right now? And as much as I am happy you're here to keep me on my toes. To keep me moving instead of standing still. To remind me of all the beautifull things I want for my life. And all of the beautifull things I'm capable of. Still. You are not my truth. I don't know you yet. And so I can't make you happy. I can't fulfill you. Or please you. Or set expectations for who you are supposed to be. I can't have you dragging me along, behind this illusion of what it's going to be. Making up stories about a life that has not happened. A life that is not mine. That does not exist beyond thoughts. Thoughts that spend my time. That use up my precious now.
Adaptation happens over time. Not before it. But with it. Not in the future. But through it. Not then. Now.
I'd like to be here now. To experience. To live. To be comfortable and satisfied and willing to let things happen. Not to let things happen to me. But to be a part of the happening.
My dearest future-self. I love you. But please be quiet while we become your beautifull you.
à bientôt,
k. augenstein