Knowing What We Want for the Future
Look back on your life. If you’re anything like me, I’ll bet you can think of a handful of things that, at the time, you would have surmised that you would have done or liked for probably your whole life but now you no longer do, like, or are interested in those things.
Let me give you an example. When I was much younger, like 14 or so, I was an obsessive Chicago Cubs and Sammy Sosa fan. It was the summer of 1998. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were both pacing to easily crush Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. Not only that, but the Cubs were a good team for the first time in years. Being that I lived just two hours from Chicago, I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of Cubs baseball and Sammy Sosa. At the time, I truly believed that I would always be a loyal, undying fan of the Cubs. Fast forward to 12 years later and you’ll find that I am no longer a Cubs fan and regard Sammy Sosa as a benefactor of baseball’s steroid era and little more. I still like baseball. I love going to baseball games and betting on baseball games. But I really no longer care for the Cubs anymore than any other club. If anything, I actually root against the Cubs a lot since I’m regularly betting on their opponents on account of the fact that everyone loves betting the Cubs (well, not this season).
The point is that ten years ago, I would have found it unfathomable that I would one day reach a point where not only do I not avidly root for the Cubs, but that I actually come to hold such complete apathy for their club that I have no hesitation in betting against them. And this didn’t even take that long. It only took me about six or seven years to go from religious about the Cubs to apathetic about the Cubs. I just grew and became interested in other things. I started making money playing poker. I applied some of the things I learned making money playing poker to how I could potentially make money betting on sports. I started questioning and examining why people (myself included) are religious about things and if it actually serves them in the long run to harbor these obsessions. With time, I fell out of love with the Chicago Cubs.
I can pinpoint several other examples of this in my own life. When I was really young, like 10 or 11 I think, I loved building model cars. I was obsessed with model cars and cars in general. I can remember imagining myself as an adult with a huge model car collection. I held a similar outlook regarding baseball and football cards. At the time, I figured I would like both of those things for pretty much all of my adult life. Of course, I haven’t touched a model car in well over a decade and despite the gambler in me that occasionally entertains the idea of picking up a pack of baseball cards while I’m in Target just to see if I can pull some really valuable autograph card, I can’t say I’ve opened a pack in probably close to ten years.
And the examples I can think of like this aren’t just limited to things in my childhood that I falsely assumed I would maintain an interest in as an adult. There are some things I was avid about as recently as a couple of years ago and now no longer have any connection to. For instance, girls I’ve dated or friends I’ve had or hobbies (like skydiving).
So what can we learn from this human impulse to falsely assume we will maintain our current level of interest in something for the remainder of our lives? I can think of one thing: don’t over-commit to something on the notion that you’ll want that thing for the rest of your life since you’ll usually wind up being mistaken. Remind anyone of anything? coughmarriagecough
I’m always inclined to laugh when there’s that inevitable line in a movie or a TV show where one character says, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I know it’s supposed to be romantic, but I just find it cheesy and unrealistic. Like anyone could possibly know exactly what they’ll want for the remainder of their life. It’s hard for me to take seriously anyone who thinks they do. To humanity’s credit, marriage is about the only example I can think of where we are socially encouraged to make a life-long commitment to something we are interested in. For the most part, no one minds if you waver on your interests unless it’s your interest in an individual of the opposite sex. Then you need to hold onto that interest for your whole life. But at least people aren’t encouraged to exchange vows with their favorite ball club (lol). We’re even expected to “retire” our interest in our career at some point.
Something else to take from this lesson is the understanding that we humans are pretty bad at knowing what we want for the future. So with that in mind, stop sweating the future so much. Stop worrying about trying to position yourself to be in a certain place twenty years from now because it’s entirely possible, likely even, that we won’t even want to be in that place in twenty years. How many of us can think of an example where there was something we really wanted and then once we got it we realized it wasn’t all it was cut out to be?
Another lesson is to not be afraid to diversify. Many people hold on to beliefs, attitudes, interests, hobbies, or relationships because they’ve done so for so long that they actually define themselves by that particular thing and aren’t sure what they’d do without it. Try something new! Anyone who truly loves you will still accept you and love you if you come to them and say that you no longer really care that much about whatever thing it was that they previously knew you cared a lot about. When you define yourself by just a couple of things, you live and die by those things. Diversify. Spread yourself around a little bit so you don’t get left behind.
Poker players can apply this reasoning to their strategy at the tables. Are there decisions you make because it was profitable two years ago? Is your style of play outdated but you don’t want to admit it? Or how about this one: is poker even the best thing for you to be doing with your life anymore?
What do you cling to? Why do you cling to it? Is it holding you back from anything?
People who are afraid to let go of things usually wind up getting stuck in the past. Don’t let the world pass you by because you’re still trying to squeeze juice out of the fruit of yesteryear. Each day there are people who go through life feeling miserable because they’re afraid to admit to themselves that their way of doing things just isn’t cutting it anymore. It’s a shame, isn’t it? Don’t be one of those people!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.