THE EVER ELUSIVE TOMORROW

Kierkegaard, the Danish Nietzsche who came on the scene before the Germans had theirs, the first Oscar Wilde to show up on the European continent before one appeared on one of its Islands, said that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” And I have to agree, because this is one of the most self-evident facts of my life and yours; I may just happen to recognize it better than you do. And that’s why I want you to recognize it too. You think you understand yourself because you think over your past actions and try to invent a narrative about your tendencies, to create a story about your personality, and paint a character portrait of yourself. 

You tell yourself, this is what I like, this is what I hate, this is what I can do, this is what I can’t do. And how do I know? Because the history of my life tells me so! But Kierkegaard says you’re very wrong, even if that wasn’t what he intended to say. Telling you that life can only be understood backwards is another way of informing you that you don’t really know what you will do in the future, what choices you will make tomorrow, what you will come to like when you grow up. 

It is telling you that even though you think you understand yourself, that you can trust yourself, you still might be a delusional one. Because you can change in understanding and even in taste. People who were once confident of their innocence lived long enough to become villains. People who were once certain of their preference for chastity became bitches along the way and are now very proud of it. 

The future is a fog we jump into with different kinds of expectations and beliefs, both optimistic and pessimistic ones, all of which can be proven wrong, all of which can truly fail. Even the present isn’t clear until it passes away to become the past, and whatever assumptions we make based on that now solid past can be rendered meaningless by the elusive future. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards, yet we have no idea what direction forward is or what the eventual destination is. I have a friend who told me “I can never do that”, then he became rich and did exactly that. 

To reiterate , we do not know ourselves. We can not trust ourselves. Our promises can become unintentional lies, even though we think they are genuine. People say “I can never do that,” because they judge their character based on the things they’ve always done, based on their past behaviors, likes and tendencies. But they just might be deceiving themselves.

So, be careful how you reject offers you presently do not find attractive, how you let go of opportunities that currently seem worthless to you, and how lightly you take relationships that you currently believe are of no benefit. That may be true now, but things might change tomorrow. Of course, we can’t always avoid regrets, but there are regrets that we can avoid. 

That thing you hate so much today, you may come to like it tomorrow, either because you’ve acquired a new taste you found in the most unlikely place, a place very close to your heart—-a taste that shares a similarity with that thing you used to dislike; or you begin to see a beauty in it, a kind of beauty you’ve always liked, that you didn’t notice in that object in the past. 

You are that unpredictable. So, live life like an artist, a spectator in a beautiful theater, so that you do not destroy those things you detest today, so they can still be there tomorrow when you change your mind about their appeal to your soul.