What if you could completely abstract your future self?
As always, when travelling back to a city you haven’t been to a while, new slang emerges, you are confronted with new words and phrases which seem alien. I noticed, on returning to Cardiff in March, that a number of my friends had begun referring to their future selves . . . not really as a form of slang (though this is how I interpreted it at first), but . . . tactically . I heard my friends come out with things like “Oh I’ll just skip work and let future Chris deal with that”, or “I have to go to a funeral tomorrow, but I’ll get drunk anyway, future Matt can sort it out”. This wasn’t just one or two people, but a whole sub-group of friends. At first this seemed strange to me, not to mention irresponsible and maybe even stupid – but the more I got to thinking about it, the more it began to make sense.
I will openly admit that I am awful at forgetting about responsibilities, and having fun. When I know that there is a deadline, or something has to be done, I usually turn down any propositions in favour of tackling the task at hand. Even if I do manage to talk myself into going out, the worry of what needs to be done usually lingers in my mind, tainting my enjoyment of the night. I am one of those people who (I believe like many others), is always looking to the future, basing decisions, such as, whether to go out for the evening, upon whether I will have time to complete particular tasks, or have the ability to fulfil certain responsibilities, if I do go out. I believe this to be a kind of thought process which a lot of people go through.
What I eventually came to realise, is that future Gareth can be a liberating force in these situations. When I think back over the last two or three years – the number of opportunities I have turned down, due to either time restrictions, responsibility, or even lack of money, worries me. If I had disregarded these trivial stock responses such as “sorry I can’t do that, I don’t have enough money”, “I can’t go out, I have to finish reading such and such by tomorrow”, or anything in a similar vein, I believe I would be a much more rounded, richer, and confident personality. The weird thing about ‘Future Gareth’ is that he can only exist if I, or you, or anyone, is willing to completely disconnect the present from the future; to create a mental divider between the two.
I began to realise, that the future Gareth, wasn’t just a run of the mill saying, but, in fact, a complex mental construct... a mental failsafe. In order for this to work, you have to make your future self a complete abstraction of your present self. You might be sceptical or cynical, and pass this off as some kind of pseudo-intellectual way of explaining the idea of burying your head in the sand (you’d be completely excused) – but I’m convinced that this idea is far more psychologically advanced, and indeed, completely different, to just resigning an obligation or responsibility to the back of your mind. The future self, in adopting this process, forces a person into entertaining what is a temporary, mentally existent second self – a twin, a double who is uncanny, one who must become something other than the self – but must by necessity still be the self. Essentially, an alter-ego must be created. An alter-ego who can carry the consequences of irresponsibility, and who the present self can lump guilt upon.
I guess I should admit, that in recent weeks I have begun to use future Gareth as an excuse TO do things, as opposed to conforming to the routine of letting present Gareth reason his way OUT of doing things. I’m not sure that future Gareth is a healthy aspect of my life, for there are certainly echoes of split personality disorder in his creation and successive re-creations. I’m also not sure if he is a sensible one, but, despite these queries, he is a valuable liberating force. I invite you, like me, to let go of your present self once in a while, and let your abstracted doppelganger take the burden – believe me, it feels good, (until you become that guilt ridden twin, and must build another). But really, aside from all that, if I learnt anything whilst at home in Cardiff, it was to use future Gareth once in a while, and to just let go now and then. Life is much more fun that way.
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THIS IS NOT AN EXIT
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