A Visit From Your Future Self
PART I
INT. YOUR LIVING ROOM—LATE EVENING.
After a long day, you’re winding down with your beverage of choice. Perhaps it’s bourbon, perhaps it’s herbal tea. Maybe you like them both, just not at the same time—or maybe you do like them at the same time!
The point is that you’re winding down. You get the idea.
All of a sudden, there’s a knock on the door. Who could that be? It’s pretty late.
When you open the door, you have quite the shock. The grizzled figure waiting outside is both a total stranger as well as someone who seems overly familiar.
“Mind if I come in?”
The figure is already stepping inside before you can respond.
“You look better than I remember,” the figure says. “But remember to check your posture. You’re slouching a bit.”
“Sorry…” you start to say. You usually end up apologizing when you aren’t sure what’s going on. “…But who are you? Are you sure you have the right address?”
“Ha!” the figure takes off its shoes and walks to the couch. “It’s me, and also you. I’m your future self. You know how this goes, right? In all the stories?”
It sounds crazy, yet looking at the figure, you see yourself. It really is Future You.
“Since when are you speechless?” Future You asks. “Come on, we’ve got a lot to talk about and only a short amount of time.”
“But…”
“Hold the questions for a moment. There’s just one big thing you need to know. You need to know that what you were planning didn’t work.“
PART II
You had a plan, and that’s what Future You has come to talk with you about.
Before Future You arrived, you were lost in your thoughts, looking forward to the future as you imagined it.
See, you had a plan to do something big. You’d thought about it a lot. You’d taken all the preliminary steps. Now it was just a matter of time. Would it work? Who knows, you thought, but I’ve got to try.
That’s usually a good enough rationale, but it doesn’t hold up if you know you won’t succeed.
Now Future You is looking all smug, hanging out in your living room and enjoying the fact that you’ve been given important information with no clear action to follow it up.
You tell Future You that you had a plan. You’d taken those preliminary steps, and now you were just waiting to…
“Right,” says Future You. “That’s what we need to talk about. The plan didn’t work.”
The plan didn’t work.
Okay, you think. That’s disappointing, but at least my future self is here to set me straight. Weird as it is, I’m glad I was looking out for me.
But there’s a problem. Future You operates under tight constraints.
“Sorry, there are rules to these things. I’m only allowed to tell you it failed, I can’t tell you how or what happened.”
Future You gets up and goes to the fridge. “Is this all you have to eat?”
“Don’t be so judgey, Future Me.”
Future You waves you off. “Let’s stay on topic. Obviously, this was important enough to send me back in time. That’s never cheap or easy, you know.”
“Can I at least ask a few questions? For example, did the plan fail because of something I did, or something I neglected to do?”
“That’s a really good question,” Future You says while looking down at the rug.
“So can you answer it?”
“No, sorry. But again, it sounds like an important question.”
You’re frustrated, but try to think of something else to ask. “If I tried harder, would it have worked?”
“Hmmm, interesting.”
“Should I spend my time figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it, or do I—”
“Ask if this was the right thing to do in the first place? Another good question.”
You could go on, but it’s clear that Future You has reached some sort of limit. “Sorry, champ, but I’m afraid that’s all the time we’ve got. Remember, what you were planning won’t work. Also, get some more vegetables.”
With that, Future You rises from the couch and walks out the door. Now what?
Your mood brightens a little. You’ve been given an opportunity, after all. How many people get a visit from the future version of themselves?
Even though it’s frustrating, you now know a lot more than you did an hour ago. You also have three good questions to consider:
“Did it fail because of something I did, or something I neglected to do?”
“If I tried harder, would it have worked?”
“Was this the right goal in the first place?”
Your plan didn’t work, and you’re still missing some important information. But however confusing it may seem, you’re better off now than you were before Future You showed up.
Now at least you know that something needs to change. What will it be?
Moral: Look for the part of the plan that was most likely to fail.
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