Oct 2022, “Don’t trespass on your future,” the de Castro’s
You pause to reread. Then again. You begin to type a reply, then delete it, not wanting to seem dense, or like you’re just feigning comprehension. It’s a puzzling, if not esoteric, text from your boss. We’re entering turbulent times as a company, and you’ve whipped yourself into a frenzy offering alternative back-up plans. Plans upon plans to manage more unknowns than could be counted. His pointed reply had aimed to help and he would later tell you that it’s a quote from his father that always stuck with him. But you’re not ready to ask, you want to sound wise. You do a quick Google search to see if it’s a famous literary quote. “Don’t trespass on your future”. No results. “Don’t trespass on the future”. Nothing. “Trespass on the future”. A few comments but nothing that helpful. You have to deduce it on your own.
Then it hits you. That powerful image surrounding the word ‘trespass’. Those foreboding signs on someone else’s property line. That wincing Clint Easton face with a shotgun pointed at you from his porch. That feeling you have once you have one foot over the line, even when no one’s watching, especially when no one’s watching. The red faced feeling of being on someone else’s property, without permission, sometimes with false bravado, sometimes out of rebellion, sometimes with the right intentions. But almost always with your moral compass pointing you back the way you came.
“Don’t trespass on your future.” You can reduce this down to the simple cliches of “live in the present”, “be more mindful”, “worry’s a time thief”, and “carpe diem”. But those don’t quite punch your gut with the right eye-popping revelation. It’s more about knowing your property lines between past, present and future, and who’s protecting them. It’s about first and foremost, knowing your property lines for the moment at hand. And that seems to click into place immediately, as you settle yourself back into where to focus your attention in these uncertain times of macrotrends and sensitive dependencies.
The property lines of the present can extend beyond the hour, the day, or even the month. Believe it, this doesn’t require you to adopt a full buddhist monk mindset. You can still see value in planning, you can see value in forecasting, even a bit of contingency preparation. You want to feel safe, you need to feel in control. But those moments of preparation should be intrinsically valuable to the present, something that gives you peace in the now. They should belong on your current property.
Planning to ‘do the thing that needs to be done’, isn’t ‘doing the thing that needs to be done’. Once planning disconnects itself from the present, you’ve become untethered. Once all those contingencies you’ve poured over compounds to an infinity of unknowns, you’ve lost your way. Once your worries become your present day obsessions, you’ve created an illusion of reality that no longer serves you. Once you continuously defer your own present state of happiness, in favor of some idealistic future happiness – you’ve intruded on yourself. ‘Don’t trespass on your future’, ironically reminds us that the future does not belong to ‘you’, not really. It belongs to a different version of you, the one that is meant to be there. That is the person that belongs behind that property line, that’s the one who’s in charge of protecting it. And if you can fully back yourself now, in this moment, then you should also back your ‘future self’, along with his abilities to navigate their own property.
Imagine a time traveling past version of yourself, coming from a year ago to rant at you and tell you everything and anything you need to be concerned about and what you need to be doing. You would laugh at him. You would feel a sort of pity. You would tell him, everything’s going to be OK and treat him like a loved and cared for child. He reminds you of problems you’ve moved on from, the things that ended up naturally settling into place, even if not perfectly. All those small protected moments fading to the past, responsible for shaping who you are today and how you live your life. You would change nothing, you will regret nothing. And so you dismiss the advice, and send this time traveler back home to the past, his present. Even as you do it, you fleetingly forget the lesson, and turn yourself forward, worrying about what’s next. Stepping outside of your present, barking orders to a ‘future you’ who is so obviously not listening. You trespass on your future.
You look at that one foot across the property line, you imagine a different you, a more informed you, a confident you, wagging his finger back saying “get off my lawn”. At first you feel naive, at first you feel shame. And then, you feel that wash of relief when it’s no longer your job to worry about something, because it’s in someone else’s more competent hands. Like spending all day worried that you left the stove on, rushing home expecting to find the house on fire, and instead see your family there, calmly making dinner. It’s all under control, it was in good hands all along.
Now, you can give yourself permission to trust in that future you. So you remove your foot, and you stay in your moment, you stay in your front yard. You return to problems you want to solve today, in the now. You back yourself to act on the information you have. You trust your ability to take each thing in turn, then onto the next one, and then the next one. You feel confident in minding your domain, just as the many versions of you, past and future, have always and will forever mind their own.
Thank you Mister & Matty de Castro
Paul Carreo 