When I was a kid, I didn’t ever have a clear plan for what I wanted to be when I grew up. I cycled often between artist, engineer, architect, adventurer, small town shop owner, big city blogger, highly-sought-after mini golf course designer, the usual. But I do have a clear memory of knowing that whatever I did, I wanted to walk across a skybridge to my job every day. It wasn’t something I was goaling toward while I interviewed; in fact, I had completely forgotten about that desire until about a year and a half into my current corporate job. The memory hit me full force as I was, you guessed it, walking across a skybridge, coffee in hand, to badge in and head toward my cubicle one morning.
I’ve never been a person with a ten- or fifteen-year life plan. I’ve had goals and ambitions, sure, but they tend to be myriad and somewhat mercurial, cyclical, and often incompatible with each other. Rather, throughout my life, I’ve had visions of what my future was going to be, vivid glimpses in stereo, in technicolor, a series of disconnected random snapshots like the opening montage to a low-budget indie film.
It wasn’t until recently I started writing these images down as they came to me, so who knows how many forgotten futures of my dreamy childhood either came to pass, like the skybridge, or faded into the obscurity of real life, like the idea of living in a Brooklyn brownstone with piles of yellowed paperbacks and plants hanging in the windows?
People provenly have a negative bias when remembering news stories and offhand mean comments, but I think we tend to have the opposite problem when remembering life plans: it’s easy to forget the little things that never came to pass, because if we didn’t, we would drive ourselves insane. So, ipso facto, the good things that did happen were always supposed to, we knew it all along. Maybe even somewhere in the depths of our subconscious, we subtly shifted the recollections of our desires to better fit the current reality.
The big missed goals are memorable, of course, and sometimes life surprises us, but where’s the harm in rewriting the color of the car you wanted when you were twelve? I don’t know if I do this, but I also can’t imagine every idea and image is still as crystal clear as the day I first saw it in my mind’s eye. But then again, who’s to say?
Years ago at a library event my friend was hosting, a self-proclaimed psychic looked straight at me in a crowd of people and told me that I, too, was psychic. That I had the juju. It became a running joke with my friends, with them asking me how things would play out, being faux disappointed when my predictions weren’t spot on, and even buying me quartz jewelry “for clarity” in my visions. The other day a friend in that group told me to “hush your aura, it’s too loud,” so clearly that clairvoyant label is here to stay.
I take new age mysticism with a grain of salt—of course there are things in the world we can’t see and don’t understand, but the chances of me being psychic are, for obvious reasons, not high. Even with my clarity quartz bracelet.
Still, when I think about the skybridge, about the other snapshots of my future that either came true or didn’t or just haven’t yet, it’s hard not to wonder about the determination of life, about the role of fate and choice, about how much we can and do know about any of it.
I have a working theory that every choice we make in life splits us off into a new reality. Some choices are more cosmically seismic than others, often unrelated to the actual weight of the decision, and they’re usually unidentifiable as such until after they’ve passed. (I’m convinced—unverifiably and utterly illogically—that had I said yes to a donut instead of no in college, my life would be wildly different right now. Why? Just a weird gut feeling.) The theory doesn’t matter, not in any practical way. I don’t think we can quantum jump timelines, like the new age influencer I follow claims will happen if you attend her special spas. And knowing the weight of something after it’s over is just a fact of life. But I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if it’s possible to recognize these reality altering decisions before they happen and better influence the outcomes, even as I know I probably wouldn’t want that even if it were plausible.
My life isn’t where I thought it would be right now. I’m not mad about any of it; for the most part, I’m happy with who I am, with the people around me, with my choices, with my job, with the ways I spend my time and where I’m at in life. Of course, like anyone, I’m plagued with what-ifs and prone to get lost down negative thought spirals on bad days, but overall there’s not much I would actually change if given the chance.
Still, it’s hard to let go of the mystic notion that there’s some perfect life out there for me, and I just need to follow the right Candy Land path to find it. It’s hard to let go of the niggling idea that my visions of the future are supernatural in origin and by not actively manifesting them, I’m missing out on some perfect future happiness. That I’ve already missed out on certain paths and can’t afford to miss out on even more. Even as I write it out, it sounds insane. But whether you blame the fantasy books I read as a child, the evangelical Christian notion of God’s perfect plan for your life, or that psychic in the library, there’s a little part of me that wants desperately to know I’m doing the Right Thing™ at all times.
But of course, like knowing the impact of every decision at every juncture in life, that’s impossible. All we can do at any given time is the best we can with what we have and what we know and what we feel. There are countless Right Things™ and countless correct paths, and life is only ever what we make of it.
Maybe someday I’ll live in a Brooklyn brownstone. Maybe every vision of my future will come true at some point in my life. Probably they won’t, because I’m constantly meeting new versions of myself with new dreams and new goals and new scenes to add to the chaotic opening credits montage.
Because it’s all opening credits, really. There are always new adventures to be had and new stories to tell, and while that thought makes me existentially itchy, it’s also freeing. Encouraging, even. I didn’t knock myself off the track my life was supposed to be on with a mistaken choice in my teen years, and I don’t need to find my way back. My ideas for the future are only ever as real as I want to make them, and maybe, like the skybridge, the little ones are content to chill in the dusty back corners of my mind until they come to pass in the context of other, bigger good things I made happen because I wanted to.
I’m not exactly where I’m supposed to be. Not because I missed a technicolor life turnoff somewhere, but because I’m not supposed to be anywhere. Maybe life is predetermined and maybe it isn’t, but it’s no use worrying about that at the expense of living today, this week, this year to its fullest potential, and having a darn good time doing it.
Stay excellent,
Kristen
I recently impulse bought Califia Farms Pumpkin Spice Oat Milk, and I think it’s better than both Starbucks and Dunkin for making pumpkin spice lattes. A lot cheaper, too. Highly recommend.
I’ve shared a few of his posts, but Lincoln Michel’s substack essay on writing style was a great read.
The Lit Nerds continues to post great stories, essays, and poems, and here are four that I recently nominated for the Best of the Net:
when asked why I’ll never write you a sincere poem
Your Morning Absurdia for April 23, 2020
It’s Banned Book Week, so go and read a banned book or twelve. Some of my favorites: Lolita, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Picture of Dorian Gray, East of Eden, Frankenstein, and Howl.
Featured image by Leigh Miles on Unsplash
Earthbound, But Aspiring 