Prospection

(Gary's work once again)
Prospection: The act of looking forward in time or considering the future.

What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you've been hiding since the Clinton Administration? Would you waltz into your boss's office and present him with a detailed description of his personal defects? Would you drive out to a steakhouse near the mall and order a T-bone, medium rare, with an extra side of REALLY BAD cholesterol? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it's a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.

Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as if it were your last, which only goes to show that some would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The things we do when we expect our lives to to continue are naturally and properly different that the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read blogs like this when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so THEY can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so THEY can avoid the coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing repetitions of THE CAT IN THE HAT so that someday THEY will have fat-cheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become, in the next minute or two, will enjoy the twinkie we are paying for now. In fact, just about any time we WANT something-a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger- we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day, or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us and our choices, honoring our sacrifices as the reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance.

Yeah, yeah. Don't hold your breath. Like the fruits of our loins, our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow their hair, move to or from St Louis, and wonder how we could ever have been stupid enough to think they'd like THAT. We fail to achieve the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well being, and they end up thanking God that things didn't work out according to a shortsighted plan. Even that person who takes a bite of twinkie we purchased a few minutes ago may make a sour face and accuse US of having bought the wrong snack. No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or if the things we unsuccessfully avoid do, then it seems reasonable (if somewhat ungracious) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell we were thinking. They may recognize our good intentions and begrudgingly acknowledge that we did the best we could, but they will inevitably whine to their therapists about how our best just wasn't good enough for them. How can this happen? Shouldn't we know the tastes, preferences, needs, and desires of the people we will be next year-or at least later this afternoon? Shouldn't we understand our future selves well enough to shape their lives-to find careers and lovers whom they will cherish, to buy slipcovers for the sofa that they will treasure for years to come? So why do they end up with attics and lives that are full of stuff that we considered indispensable and that they consider painful, embarrassing, or useless? Why do they criticize our choice of romantic partners, second guess our strategies for professional advancement, and pay good money to remove tattoos that we paid good money to get? Why do they experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation? We might understand all this if we had neglected them, ignored them, mistreated them in some fundamental way-but damn it, we gave them the best years of our lives! How can they be disappointed when we accomplish our coveted goals, and why are they so damned GIDDY when they end up in precisely the spot where we worked so hard to steer them clear of? Is there something wrong with them?
Or is there something wrong with us?


Please leave comments on what you think..I have more to this if you're interested.