Not Looking Forward

How do we manage the present when we can't anticipate the future?

August is a trigger month for me. Though I have lived in California for almost 20 years, I have held fast to some core principles from my East Coast upbringing: walk quickly (walking is a mode of transportation, not a leisure activity), never say “no worries” (there is always something to worry about people), and without fail, return to the east for what I call “Real Summer” for at least a month before school starts.

Real Summer is sticky. It involves fireflies and mosquitoes. It makes me talk with a Boston accent after just two cold Narragansett Shandies. It is my compromise for living 3,000 miles away from many of my favorite people in the world. It is my happy place.

Me after like 15 minutes at a Boston-area bar

Yes, it is a minor casualty of this moment that I find myself, in August, with no plans to experience Real Summer this year. Mourning cancelled coronavirus vacations is like watching your whole block burst into flames and screaming “Noooo, I had half a pint of Cherry Garcia in my freezer!!!” Everyone is losing everything, duder. And also, if you’re alive and healthy and housed right now you will most certainly have more joys to come, maybe even as early as 2024.

But I’m not sure how long these disappointments can continue to mount, with nothing to take their place. Having no summer vacation, no Christmas hopes (this Jew loves her some Christmas), no plan to see my mother, whom I have not been away from this long in my entire lucky life, leaves me with nothing to look forward to. I hit the pillow each night, hours after I should (after my kids are asleep, I fight hard to stay awake and watch NBA Desktop in peace, even if I’m so tired that it hurts), with nothing to dream about. Oh of course I have bad dreams, we all have those. But the crawlspace in my brain that used to house warm, cozy images of forthcoming delights is now nothing but spiders and old business receipts. And it’s not just that I’m worried about myself or my ability to drift off into the slumber that is frequently interrupted by my two-year-old daughter screaming “No, I don’t like that Max!” from the depths of her sibling-rivalry nightmares. I’m worried about all of us. If all I’m seeing is the void, some of you must be seeing it too.

Though you might get a different impression reading this newsletter, I am not depressed. At least I don’t think I am. Though when you look at the diagnostic criteria for depression, one does start to wonder if 99.9% of us could meet it. But when someone asks you what you are hopeful about, and your answer is “further research is needed” you are certainly at-risk for depression. According to this Portable Document Format file from the internets, positive psychology cool-cat Martin Seligman and his co-author Ann Marie Roepke seem to agree. They insist that “faulty prospection” can actually be a pathway to depression (but when there is a global crisis that has upended life as we know it is killing people, is it really faulty?).

In adorable scientific-paper speak, they outline three forms of faulty prospection:

1. Poor generation of possible futures

2. Poor evaluation of possible futures

3. Negative beliefs about the future

For speaking-to-human-beings purposes, I have renamed these:

1. Good shit ain’t in store

2. Let me tell you why shit will be bad, and

3. If shit, then fuuuuuuck

So basically, if you can’t envision a positive future, you are very likely to already be depressed or to be riding the Portishead express to future depression. IMHO, this means the accounts of increased depression since Covid are major under-estimations. Very few of us are envisioning a positive future right now.

Is there anything to be done? I think if I tried to make a dream board right now, it would be one never-ending spiral drawn in black Sharpie with the word “MEH” in cut-out magazine letters in the center. Some would say: “Live in the present!” Do I really have to? The present isn’t too pretty to look at either.

Marty and Ann Marie suggest that, to combat all of this faulty prospection, we should engage in something called “anticipatory savouring.” I cant tell you how much I love this term. I will refrain from translating it into modern English or tainting it with an American spelling. They recommend hyper focusing on joys, however small. “Vivid images evoke stronger emotions than words do.” Should I reconsider that dream board?

I may reluctantly attempt this. My family and I kind of do this. On the days we can manage to sit at a table together for three whole minutes, we like to play “rose, thorn, and bud,” the dorky family-conversation-starter activity wherein each person says one thing they enjoyed today (rose), one thing that was hard (thorn) and one thing they are looking forward to (bud). Though my toddler usually answers all three of these questions by yelling “Stella!” the name of her neighbor and mentor in all things looney, the four-year-old takes it quite seriously. He often cheats and lists many, many roses, one of which is always “right now.” He rattles off endless buds: playing battles with dada tonight, getting donuts on Thursday, going to the beach tomorrow, listening to “Summer Love” after dinner and having family dance party. Even when I sat down thinking I had not one thing to look forward to, this list, big and small and very earnest, always shifts me a bit. I DO love chasing my children in the living room to throwback Justin Timberlake songs. I DO love the beach. Even when I am not drinking a shandy.

There are no words.

Kids are looking forward. They are packing their suitcases and going on “trips to Boston” in the backyard. They are playing school even though they know they aren’t going back. They ask a million questions about what kinds of donuts will be available to choose from, so that they can form a vivid image. They are anticipatory savouring experts. And though I don’t always want to follow, they are taking me with them. Though will be no Real Summer this year, maybe not even next year. Instead, there is a pilgrimage to the three-story-high agave plant down the block that someone has named Vicky. There are drives to nowhere, which I begrudgingly admit satisfy my wanderlust just a bit. There is my son, whose little brain cannot think more than a few days ahead, hopping on the back of my bike, which is now an alien kitty spaceship, looking up at me with that hopeful, sticky face, asking “Mama, where do you want to go in this vast universe?”