Friday, April 16, 2004

Future Perfect

It was one of those moments when I actually expanded my mentality - figured out how to use my brain in two or three directions at once, a sort of personal intellectual watershed.  I remember it clearly: I was lying in bed, waiting for sleep.  It was 1970.  My sister and I lived in a comfortable house that my dad and mom owned (the fine points of mortgages were lost on me at the time); we had two cars, a nice grassy backyard, a dog and a model train (N gauge).  Dad was a grown-up, by definition and acclaimation.  I wondered in my idle childlike way what the world would be like when I was dad’s age - what I would be like. I wondered, as well, when that would be - when I would be as old as dad. The prospect seemed so remote as to be almost fantastic. It would be almost like living in the year 2000, an amazingly prophetic and futuristic date, from my perspective. 

I started doing the math in my head, slowly, clumsily.  Dad was 36; I was six; that’s a thirty year difference.  I would therefore be the age my father was at that moment in another thirty years.  That would take me to thirty years from 1970.  That would be the year 2000.  Not only that, but in the year 2000, I would be as old as my father was at the moment I was having this thought.  It was the same both ways.  It blew my little mind. But at least I knew what was coming - how life would be for me when I got to a given recognizable point in the future.  I had thirty years to get my own wife, house, kids, cars, world.  Although I had not idea now to accomplish any of it, it seemed like an appropriate goal structure and timeline. 

Thirty years later the year 2000 was upon me and I realized that I’d reached that predictive point in my future.  Married, but no kids.  No house - we rented a flat.  I was just starting a second career, saw a future ahead of me that looked nothing like my dad’s life, and less so with each passing day.  All I had anticipated that timeless night when I did all that math in my head was not to be - not on the schedule I’d anticipated, anyway, and maybe not ever.  All I could say to myself was, “I guess that didn’t work out like you figured....”

In retrospect, I’m relieved.  I’d have missed out on a lot if it had gone as I’d expected.  But I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have explained that to me if I’d had a chance to try in 1970.  The importance of breaking the predictive model was based on a value structure I hadn’t yet recognized, much less learned to appreciate.  Hell, I’m still learning to appreciate it now.