Facing the Future
A life of moving forward without looking ahead
Who can say for certain whether people actually do have clear pictures of their imagined or aspirational futures, but long-term envisioning is a one of the more popular psychological games we play with ourselves. Where do you see yourself in five, ten, twenty years? At the very least, it’s an activity that could help us crystallize our goal-setting, giving us the impression that we’re pointing our aims towards a tangible-seeming target.
But instead of a vision board, sometimes it seems like I’m staring at a memory board. Literally–the large blank canvas I have perched on my desk is filled with postcards of my favorite places, pictures of myself as a child and pictures of my beautiful grandmother as a young woman. There are, amongst these things, a few bits and bobs of visual stimuli, and then there’s an oddly blank spot at the top left corner, waiting for I’m not sure what, but maybe I’ll know it when I see it.
I have a lot of ideas and certainly no shortage of desires and ambitions, and yet I have no line of sight to any horizon, just a vast, borderless expanse in all directions and that vague sense of propulsion you have on the water. I suppose the word for that feeling is drifting, a rather apt description as I’m currently reading Kate Zambreno’s similarly-titled and similarly…
