If my serene future self, having spent the next thirty years in mindfulness and gratitude, starting tomorrow, is unlike my present self as dreamed, does it become unethical to read his diary?
The unmanly trepidation with which, thirty years ago, I finally read this page, I well recall, yet how is it that now I can’t think of a word to write? Consulting my diary of the time, I find:
The embarrassing anxiety with which my future self approaches his diary, digging up this very page to find out what he’ll write, largely undermines the authority of:
The authority with which you invest me, your future self, while flattering, is misplaced.
Or:
What I wouldn’t give for these last thirty years squandered in mindfulness and gratitude when I could have been doing something of some small value to others.
Exercising utmost charity, I can only suppose my future self is attempting reverse psychology, nudging me toward not abandoning, under any circumstances, the austere practices I hereby—
Which alas is what I am doing, knowing too well the futility of these last thirty years squandered writing stories, if you could call them that, only to avoid disappointing the dream of my past self—
Which is rich, coming from my future self, for whose sake in particular I’ve resolved to meditate and gratitude away the great work lying within me, only because it will happen to lead nowhere and become his chief disappointment in life. With any mindfulness, he might reflect that I, as his former self, would be just as concerned with the dreams of my own former self, for instance, consulting my journal of thirty-odd years ago, age seven:
If I keep up my collection for the next thirty years, with the money I save not having a numismatist store I can deliver coins directly, in a 1964 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, with a chauffeur, as I will be wearing an eye patch.
Light, in short, on mindfulness and gratitude, confirming it’s solely for myself of the future that I resolve to undertake—
In response to which inanity I can only quote the private diary of myself of thirty-odd years further on:
Having read over the diaries of my entire life, here concluding, I’m swept with a profound, ineradicable disappointment in myself for having devoted so much of my life to not disappointing myself, despite apparently having been aware of that very disappointment, and so seeking to mitigate it by rashly disregarding the impulse to not disappoint.
The philosophical constipation of which leaves no recourse but to commence, on an emergency basis, the practice of mindfulness and gratitude—
Which I seem, by an excess of psychological gambits, to have instilled with such importance it must have been obvious I would avoid and procrastinate it, if absolutely necessary by giving voice to the great work lying within me, the inadvisability of which I hope to make apparent to myself with this, alas, conspicuously promising excerpt.
"If my serene future self, having spent the next thirty years in mindfulness and gratitude, starting tomorrow, is . . . " I laughed out loud at "starting tomorrow". Yes, I too always start tomorrow.
"I’m swept with a profound, ineradicable disappointment in myself for having devoted so much of my life to not disappointing myself . . . " Is this universal?
Nice piece, David.
fabulous! Yes it definitely resonates with me as an artist who happens to have ++30 years of this mindfulness thing.