Today (Still) Doesn’t Prove a Future

I recently told an actor friend who was struggling mentally because of the disparity between his current plight and his Hollywood dreams. His lack of fame, fortune, and key roles came in stark contrast to his desire for a booming career. Furthermore, he wondered if his current situation was evidence that he wasn’t cut out for acting. 

I posed a question. “What did the life of the most successful actor you can think of look like before they made it?” 

His response included a description of a Hollywood A-lister who struggled to find work, impoverished, and who wouldn’t be noticed on the street. It sounded to the both of us that in answering my question, he was inadvertently describing his life. 

To which I said, “So, if things worked out to exceed your wildest dreams, your life would look exactly the way it does now before it changed. Correct?”

Correct.

If he won an Academy Award later, he would likely be as unremarkable, jobless, and poor as he was now. While this observation doesn’t change the current moment, it does do away with the notion that his current reality is some sort of proof that his future is doomed. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

All too often our rational brains are deciding our futures pessimistically based on the details of the current moment. This “logic” fails to consider that things are exactly the way they are… until they aren’t.