Of Eyelashes and Life Choices

I found my first gray eyelash the other day. WHAT? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS? Who knew that eyelashes went gray? Well, everyone knew, obviously, now that I say that out loud, because hair’s gonna hair. But I sure did not see this coming. And not gonna lie, it shook me.

Now. I am a wholly sensible human being (occasionally; stop laughing). I can take a gray eyelash in stride. I am not “worried,” per se, about the fact of growing old. But! I do have dreams and ideas about what I want to accomplish. Or, less “accomplish,” exactly, and more, ways I want to spend my time. The intersection of a “bucket list,” “legacy,” and “well-lived life” Venn diagram, maybe.

I remember when I turned 40, on the last night of being 39, I was insisting, quite earnestly, to Mala that she needed to find a way to stop the clock, because there’s no way that I could be someone who is an age with a first numeral that is higher than 3. I wasn’t there yet. I needed more time. Don’t worry, I got over it. Pretty much the very next day, when I was like, “oh wow, I’m 40. I can do anything I want. Take that, suckas.”

But then I turned 58 this year, and 58 was like: you thought 40 was weird? Wait until I tell you about this thing called “60.”

Even though it’s not a zero year or a five year, something shifted in me in a very noticeable way. Every day, I wake up to read that someone about my age, give or take, has died. I feel this acute clarity that I have less and less time to spare. That if anything is going to change in my way of being, it’s going to have to start changing now. And sometimes, a small voice whispers to me that it already might be too late.

But let me not catastrophize. While it’s true that the time ahead of me is not infinite, with any luck it will be long “enough.” So any small steps I make today toward change might still have time to make a difference. 58-year-old-me, for example, is a whole different human from 40-year-old me (I note with a gigantic sigh of relief). Similarly, no doubt 76-year-old me will look back on this time in my life and wonder what the hell today-me was on about. “Good lord, child,” she (I?) might be thinking, “You’re making things way too complicated. Legacy schmegacy. Chill out.”

Or, she (I?) might read this blog post and think, “Phew, finally you’re starting to get it right, you chump. About damn time.”

I kinda hope it’s the latter, not only to inspire me to start making changes, but also to hear future-me refer to today-me as a chump. It’s a good word, don’t you think?

As Mala often reminds me, we all have to hold two truths at once: we have to live today as if it might be the last day of our lives, at the same time as we have to live today as if it’s a mere drop in our lifespan’s bucket, as if today is the first day of the rest of our lives. Both/and, to coin a phrase.

How do I balance these two seeming opposites, tending to both today-me and future-me? I recently listened to an A Slight Change of Plans podcast episode that addressed this very conundrum. Well, it turns out that it’s possible. I apparently need to integrate future-me into my today-me’s consciousness. To experience my future-self as a living, breathing entity worthy of my today-me’s compassion.

Apparently, most of us focus almost exclusively on today-us and woefully neglect our future-us. We treat future-us as a stranger and don’t really pay attention to the ways that our current activities affect, for better or worse, our future-us. And that has very tangible consequences, such as whether we contribute to a retirement account (if we are so privileged as to have a thing like a “retirement account,” but you get the idea) or not.

The antidote? According to Hal Hershfield, the stronger of a personal connection I feel toward my future self, the more I will integrate her wellbeing into my current decisions. And that, needless to say, will give my future self better odds of a decent life, by which I mean the life I would envision for her if I would bother to think of her at all in the first place.

So, how might I accomplish this task of building a stronger relationship with my future self? By making her more vividly alive to me today. And there are numerous ways to do so.

One way is to see what I might look like when I’m older. If I do that, I’ll be more likely to contribute to that apocryphal retirement account. Which is what led me to that experimental abomination image above. TBH, that image really does make me super curious about what 2055-me is thinking, feeling, dreaming, living, imagining. (If humans still exist in 2055, here’s hoping.)

Another way is to build empathy with my future self by using “I” statements when describing her (my?) life in the future. “When I’m 76, I’ll be enjoying a nice meal at a sweet local restaurant that I’ve walked to with my friends,” vs. “When she’s 76, she’ll enjoy a meal at a restaurant she walks to with her friends…” No, seriously, that point-of-view shift legit transforms the choices we make today. If I am my future self, walking to and dining out with friends, then I will more likely make choices today that lead to that eventuality.

Another way is to literally engage with her (me?) through letter-writing, either from future-me to today-me or vice versa, today-me to future-me. Dear 58-year-old me in 2023 from your 2055 future self. Or, alternatively, Dear 76-year-old me in 2055, from your 2023 year old previous self.

Regardless, the point is to have a direct relationship with our future selves, whether it’s through an altered image, by using “I” statements, via a letter-writing campaign, or, I don’t know, maybe some spooky time-travel sh%* that they haven’t even conjured up yet.

My dad is 88. Did he think, when he was 58, that he would live this long? Doubtful. Would he have made different choices, at 58, if he’d known then that he’d live at least another 30 years? Perhaps. [Note to self: ask my dad what he’d have done differently when he was my age.] If the gods tell me I’ll live another 30 years, would I make different choices starting today? Damn right I would.

And to think this all started with one gray eyelash. Never underestimate the awesome power of very small things.