On the rest of the weekend
never mind the vast and unknowable future
When we look forward, we tend to believe that we are going to be the same person in the future, that there is this illusion of continuity. But in fact, we are going to be different people.
I’m so tired, I say to my spouse Janyce.
So am I, she says.
It’s Sunday afternoon on a long weekend and we’re back in the house from a dog walk on the Franklin rail trail. It’s a nice day out, sunny in patches, but every so often a gray cloud covers the sky and it looks like it might rain. We cut the walk a couple miles short because we had a list of things we thought we might do today. I was planning to weed the garden and spread the bag of compost and decide on perennials to fill the open space. And we thought we’d start cleaning out the garage together. There are clothes in the dryer. The hummingbird feeder has a crack and needs to be replaced.
“I’m going to make a tuna sandwich,” I say to Janyce, who is sitting beside me on the couch flipping through the latest Real Simple magazine.
“Is that what you want?” she says.
“Or I could make us a bowl of ground turkey and spicy sauce with orzo?” I look over at her and she has put the magazine down. The living room is dark and cool now that a storm cloud seems to be hovering over the backyard.
“With a lot of sprinkled cheese on top?” she says.
“Yes, with a lot of cheese,” I say.
“Listen to this,” she says, picking up the folded magazine and brandishing it again with one hand, “this article says to build the emergency fund first, then pay off the credit card, then save for retirement. In that order.”
“Mmm hmm, let’s make lunch,” I say.
Our dog seems to be as low energy as we are, curled up on her chair. Sunlight is filtering through the backyard trees in tempo with the clouds passing overhead like a light switch being turned on and off. Selene doesn’t even move when we carry our steaming bowls back to the couch. We decide to watch a short movie in the middle of the afternoon with our feet resting up on the ottoman.
I think we’re weary because we’ve been talking about money for days trying to make decisions. Future decisions. Or maybe it’s just lingering Covid fatigue, or maybe it’s just the inertia that can happen when you have a long a list of possible chores and none of them sound like much fun. But I’m also thinking about the Ted Talk I heard the other morning when the sunlamp came on in the bedroom and the radio kicked on and I was lying there, looking out at the grape vines with their reddish stems curling and reaching. Several miniature grape clusters are starting to form after years of nothing.
Shankar Vedantam was saying that when we look forward, we tend to believe that we are going to be the same person in the future, that there is this illusion of continuity. But in fact, we are going to be different people. The title of his talk is: Your future self might not want the life you're planning for them.
Janyce shifts her head so that she is resting it on my shoulder while we watch the trilogy of relationship vignettes in a 2020 drama called Love is love is love streaming on Amazon. It features a few aging actors we recognize: Rosanna Arquette (with a terrible facelift), Polly Draper (I remember her from the TV show called ThirtySomething in the late ’80s) Cybill Shepherd looking quite a bit older than when she was on the L Word. But of course, a lot of years have already passed since then. And Rita Wilson. She looks the best out of the whole bunch. I just read that she and Tom Hanks have been married for 34 years.
This is a thing I do these days. I look at actors and people I remember and make a note of how they are aging. I just turned 57 a few days ago, and it occurred to me that I’m getting closer to age 60 than I am moving away from age 50. And Janyce and I are a long way past those blissful dating years. The question I am asking myself now is: “If we are turning into completely different people, how do we maintain the love and excitement we felt for each other when we first met?” Shankar says that if you accept the idea that you won’t be the same person, (and I do) then you need to play an active role in curating your future self by expanding your horizons now. His advice is to stay curious, embrace humility, and most importantly to be brave, especially in the face of new opportunities.
“See, this is what I mean when I say we might need change just for the sake of change,” I say to Janyce.
The movie is over, and we watch the credits roll on the screen to Rita Wilson singing the shmaltzy song that was the centerpiece of the last vignette.
“That wasn’t all that great,” I say.
“No. It wasn’t,” says Janyce. “Hey, let’s get up.” she says. “How about we take Selene with us, and we get iced coffees, and you buy your new hummingbird feeder and then we come back and tackle the garage for an hour.”
I look out the window just as the sun starts to pour back into the dark living room again.
“You mean, let’s just start doing something and figure everything out another time?” I say. “You read my mind.”