The Runway is Not Infinite: Don't Forget About Today

I'm someone who has an eye to the future, and with respect to long time horizon endeavors, that's usually an asset.

But I recently had to sit down and really take a look at what pushing this orientation a bit too far had done to my experience of the present.

To give an example of this proclivity, I'm not married, I don't have kids, and yet I recently found myself researching and planning out an irrevocable trust, thinking about compound interest projections beyond even my own lifetime, for the benefit of a family line that doesn't even presently have a reasonable origination.

I think that somewhere along the way, I implicitly equated responsibility and long-term planning, and then I turned it up to an eleven in an endeavor to be highly responsible and lay a groundwork for success for my future, and those who presently (or who may eventually) depend on me in some fashion.

Now, to be clear, I absolutely believe there is merit in this way of thinking. After all, delayed gratification has its benefits, particularly financial ones, with respect to the retail investor, for example. I think also of the (arguably misinterpreted) Stanford Marshmallow Experiment which had the appearance of evidence in favor of the practice.

But my reality was that this sort of thinking ultimately also lead me to a muted experience of the present where I began to view it entirely as the currency with which to purchase an envisioned future.

I saw opportunity cost, and I simply acted in ways which I felt minimized that cost. It wasn't pathological productivity, per se, as much as it was an indefinite postponement of all gratification due to habit.

And, that's just not a way to good way live, in my experience.

Certainly, many of us trade some "todays" for the promise of some better tomorrows, and it can be a reasonable one on definite timescales. We might go to college for 4-8 years, for example, sacrificing potential income and possibly accruing debt in return for the higher probability of an elevated pay ceiling. But, for me at least, it needs to stay in scope and not spill over into my entire life.

Most folks probably won't benefit from my takeaway here, especially those who are not prone or able to plan meaningfully for the future for any number of reasons, but the ones who find themselves in a similar head space and life circumstance might.

My conclusion is simply a return to a perennial adage in my own words— today is what we actually hold in our hands, and tomorrow is not given. I think that, as with many things, there is a balance to be struck between planning and sacrificing for the unrealized future and actually engaging with the day and the people who inhabit it, not imagining our present to be fodder without end.

The runway is not infinite, I've realized, and somewhere in the middle or a bit past it, one hopes to catch a little air (and perhaps even enjoy the view for a fleeting moment).