The other day, I heard an ad for a financial management company that promised to “future-proof” my portfolio.
This tickled me. I thought, “You mean I can Future-proof my life, like I’d fire-proof an apron or moth-proof a wool blanket?”
It amused me to imagine spraying something on my life, or putting mothballs around it, to keep it from getting damaged by the future.
But really, to “future-proof” something means to design it so it still remains useful, adaptable, and resilient as the world changes.
To future-proof my life, I would first have to envision an ideal version of myself living in the future. This future might be as early as tomorrow morning, or as distant as a decade from now.
Next, I’d have to conjure up what craziness the future might wreak on this ideal, future me, and try to design a life now to protect myself from it.
What Can The Future Do To Me?
At the very least, the future’s going to age me. But other existential threats could harsh my mellow in the future as well: disease, climate change, AI, and the volatile political landscape, all of them threaten the happiness of Future Kath.
I’m probably not doing enough right now to bolster my reserves. At the very least, I need to be lifting weights, and saving money.
I could also hire that finance company to future-proof my portfolio.
But even though I believe I should be preparing for the future and taking actions now to protect my health and happiness, I find it difficult to stay motivated for Future Kath’s happiness only.
Sure, I want to be able to carry heavy grocery bags when I’m 80, but I don’t believe in the future enough for me to pick up the dumbbells just for some imagined muscularity in some hazy future. I need the training itself to be a source of joy and meaning, not only a future payoff.
The questions I need to deal with are these:
If I only did things for future me, what am I sacrificing now? And if I only live for now and ignore future me, what am I missing?
If I only did things for future me, I’d be sacrificing the joy of the present moment, which is the only place I can truly live.
And if I lived entirely in the now with no thought of the future consequences of my actions, I’d feel as if I’d be abandoning my hopes and dreams.
I need to learn to sit in the tension of these two concepts and enjoy toggling back and forth between them. Too much now focus, no incentives to dream. Too much future-casting and I lose the connection to what’s really here.
Inspiration Location 