Predicting the future

Is planning an illusion?

I’ve reached the point where it is undeniably obvious that I cannot predict even my immediate future. My friends can look into the future and envision what their lives will be like five, ten, thirty years from now. I might make a guess at what tomorrow or even next week will be like. I know I’m going to be wrong.

Whatever I anticipate going wrong will turn out to be just fine. Whatever does go wrong will be something I never even considered. The universe is just so much more imaginative than I am. It’s so much more complex than I can comprehend.

My life might be less predictable than most, although I’m not entirely sure. Do people who have lives that seem mired in routine actually have the ability to predict their life far into the future? From my perspective it doesn’t seem that they do.

Routine gives some people the illusion that they can should be able to plan and predict the rest of their life. Then they’re left reeling when it turns out life does not follow a predictable path.

No one quite promises that if we follow their advice we’ll get guaranteed results. Regardless of the disclaimers, it’s hard to not come to believe that the nutrition guidelines, fitness headlines, career seminars, and retirement calculators are accurate. And then…things don’t go according to plan. It feels a bit like we’ve been lied to, cheated, or, perhaps worst of all, it feels like we’ve failed.

I’m listening to Jane McGonigal’s Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything ― Even Things That Seem Impossible Today. She explains a game she plays with her students: Stump the Futurist. We come up with something that’s certain to be exactly the same ten years from now. She shows us evidence that it’s already in the process of changing.

Perhaps I’ll be better at predicting the future when I finish the book. I’ve got 12 more hours to go. Given my astounding lack of ability, I don’t have high expectations. But, I’ve been wrong before. Just about every time.

I still make plans and predictions. I can’t stop myself. I’ve accepted that planning is an anxiety ritual of mine, not a sign that I’m a Responsible Adult Doing the Right Things. It’s a nice little game, as long as I remember it’s a game.

I find it perversely comforting to know that I cannot predict what will happen in my life tomorrow. When I lied to myself about how much control I had, I felt an enormous amount of shame and guilt when things didn’t go according to plan. Minor things were signs of my failure to account for what might happen or signs of other people letting me down. Now, that weight of responsibility has been lifted off my shoulders. It was something I imagined, but it sure felt heavy.

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Something to bring to the next game night.

Josh Kornbluth has a couple pieces on hospice and my favorite is on the folks who dropped out of hoe.

"Thinking of ourselves as individuals in an already individualistic society is innately more limiting than it is helpful. When we embrace that we are inter-dependent beings just like any other life form— a whole world of care opens up to us even if it may take practice to seek it out & ease into it."

"Carers, despite recognising that their charges are ill, find themselves behaving in ways they know are counterproductive: arguing, blaming, insisting on reality, and taking symptoms personally. Because caregivers are “healthy”, we assume they should be reasonable, which is what makes their inability to adapt to the disease feel like a personal shortcoming."

"I don’t always understand autism. There are days when I feel like I am playing a game where I haven’t been given the rules."

“Prisons are becoming nursing homes"

What do we consider basic needs?

When experts come in to design things for people they know nothing about.

We know the petty cruelty of bureaucracy. Here's what happens when you don't keep up with their demands.

“Canada needs to move toward a policy framework in which functional limitation – to greater or lesser degree, whether permanent or temporary, episodic or ever-present – is considered the norm.”

We're talking about the taxes but also about a lot of other things: “I learned a whole new way that America is a humiliating international laggard. Our tax system is about the worst of all possible worlds—expensive, ultra-complicated, inefficient, slow, inaccurate, and an enormous headache for the citizenry.”

Filing your taxes in the US? Here's how to file for free.

If you find the links I share interesting, there's a lot more on our website. I add things to a searchable database, so if you want to find articles (and podcasts and the occasional video) on gen-x caregivers or caring for a neighbor, it's easy to pull up a curated list of relevant personal stories, reports, art projects, and news articles. And if you have something other people would find interesting, send it my way and I'll add it. Hit reply, comment, submit it through our contact form, or send me an email.