One of the best pieces of advice I ever received came from a woman who rented me a room in my senior year of college, and I am hereby passing it on to you. My landlady, then in her mid-40s, was attractive and self-possessed, but her life had not been happy. She’d married unwisely and had gone through an awful divorce – is there any other kind? – and suffered from a persistent lack of funds. She’d spent time reflecting on the causes for her misfortunes. I think she hoped to help her young tenants avoid the errors she’d made.
The main thing she’d got wrong in her youth, she said, was in failing to contemplate a larger picture of how her life might develop. She never took stock of whom she truly was, or what she really liked, but instead drifted along on the tide of events, making what turned out to be crucial life decisions without serious consideration. Now — which is to say, 25 years ago — she realized that she could easily have made a life more to her liking, and less strewn with emotional and financial wreckage, if she’d only thought ahead.
She urged me: Try to imagine the life you want to have; not now, not even next year, but five years from now.
Summon up a mental picture of yourself, as you hope you’ll be – and register the details. Don’t edit them because they seem quirky or uncool. Ask yourself questions: Do you want to be surrounded by little children, or on horseback, or drinking in the applause of a TV audience? Do you see yourself working in heels, or cowboy boots, or maybe a snorkel mask? Ideally, would you spend your days cozily indoors or out in the open air? Do you prefer crowds, or solitude, or doesn’t it matter? Can you imagine living in Manhattan, or Dallas, or Calcutta – and if so, what appeals? Do you like acquiring things, or do you want to travel light?
It’s an amazingly useful thought exercise, it seems to me, not least because it is only that: an exercise. You are not bound by anything you imagine, but the process can help you determine a course of life most suitable to you.
As my landlady explained, we’re all constantly presented with an uncountable number of almost infinitesimal decisions, between A and B. If we think in five years’ time we’d like to be in the neighborhood of A (or B, or Calcutta), then we are that much better equipped to make each tiny but cumulative decision. As someone said, every door closing is another door opening. It is also true that every choice begets further choices – but can also close down the options not taken. So it is wise indeed to give some thought to where our choices will take us.
Of course, that’s all very well if you are a senior in college with a gleaming, unsullied future stretching out before you … but useful nonetheless, I daresay, even for those who have already drawn their lot.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
