Then and Now—The Difference a Decade Makes

I was scrolling through Facebook Memories the other day and I ran across a photo of myself from 2013 that I’d completely forgotten about. The picture was a relic of a different time, a different place, a version of me that’s altered in some ways from the current one.

The gravity of how much my life, and the world, has changed since that photo was taken shook me a little. Alternating waves of both gratitude and melancholy continued to wash over me for a while as I reminisced.

That old version of me still had both of his parents and walked his beagle four times a day, he had lots of friends and got together with them regularly. He also still lived from paycheck-to-paycheck, worked a corporate job, and still somehow found the time to keep writing, and juggling all of life’s other responsibilities.

This person’s life wasn’t anywhere near where he wanted it to be but when the alarm rang at 4:45am his feet hit the floor in the morning he was motivated by the unshaken belief that it would, somehow, all work out and he would achieve his goals. He only was beginning to learn what rejection was like and how to bounce back from it.

This past version of me also took quite a few things for granted, didn’t completely comprehend the urgency of time, and was certainly a lot more naive about how the world actually worked. The person in that black and white picture, taken on the porch of our bungalow on a warm summer afternoon, was actually in a precarious place but he was oblivious to it—he really just thrived on pure faith.

This kind of reflection is invaluable, as is comparing our past to our current selves.

As I’ve since discovered, there’s always a price we pay for crossing those imaginary finish-lines we create for ourselves. Putting ourselves out there and striving takes as well as gives. As we finally achieve all those dreams, goals, and aspirations, one by one, we pay in time and energy.

But there are also additional line-items or “taxes” on that bill. These are the things people don’t talk much about. Each time we achieve, we surrender some of our naïveté and we gradually hand over more of the fallacies of our youth. The dark hair goes grey and the wrinkles begin to appear, the mind doesn’t work quite as quickly as it once did. If we’re lucky, the wisdom we gain makes up for some of it.

But do you know what the really beautiful thing is?

Throughout it all, we don’t have to lose our hope, our sense of humor, our kindness, or optimism. It's also vitally important to our well-being to set new goals for ourselves and strive towards them. Life and apathy will try their level best to steal all of those things from you but whether or not it succeeds is totally up to us. Along the way we must continuously take stock and preserve these vitally important parts of ourselves.

I’d like to say I have a clear idea of what my life will be like in another decade but I really have no clue. One thing I do know is my photo will look markedly different from the current one. I will have experienced more loss and gain and will have traded away many more hours of my life in the process.

As I sit here writing this I imagine autonomous vehicles and robots will be zipping and stumbling about in that future world. Hopefully AI will have helped cure many of our societal ills and stamped out the horrific corruption that runs rampant in our world today. Throughout it all I hope that we can shield ourselves from growing bitter, rigid, and pessimistic.