We're Figuring My(self) Out

A crosswalk

The canopy

Looking to the left

it’s a casual aside,

Root rot

Eyes grow wide, realizing

The door half closed

a leaning post, boundaries

shoes in hand, it’s been stopped for a chat

Mulch

Puddles, dug out

A ring of chairs

It’s difficult to stop him from cutting in

A message that requires your thumb

It’s something to talk about later, a chat

I’m making this work to try and open up some conversations with the people in my life about the future

I’m sometimes kind of frustrated with group dynamics and with lovers and friendships when it comes to looking past the present moment.

I want to talk about how all relationships are about figuring out who we will be together in the future

And we seem to have a hard time with that

There’s an order to the stuff I want to talk about in this show, some things only make sense if you have the background first

It starts with the human perception of oneself, which stretches like a tree into the future

We imagine our next steps, the rest of our day, who we will be in a week, a month, a year. 

Future selves branch out from the present, which has woven those branches into the fundament that is the past

When we interact with another person, and our tree shares branches with theirs, like when we’ve planned to hang out, or to do a project together, or to go out dancing, 

It’s easy to forget that what we have done is attempt to predict the future, that there are many assumptions involved

How do we know that the person will be where they said they would be? How do we know that we will?

This is easy to push aside when we talk in the span of days and weeks, but as the future self we attempt to negotiate for gets further and further away in time, the harder it is to be certain of what that future self will be

-break-

If all relationships are about figuring out who we will be together, how does one account for change? 

To talk about change, I’m going to reference the story of the Ship of Theseus as I remember it, which I don’t want to look up again because I’m afraid the original story won’t fit what I’m trying to say. So I’ll just do this from memory

The ship of Theseus is an old Greek ship that sits in a museum and rots. As each wooden beam rots away, it is replaced with an exact replica by the museum staff. Exact, down to every detail. 

Eventually, the ship is made completely out of these replaced parts, and no original part of the ship is left.

At what point does the ship cease to have the same identity? Does it stop being the ship of Theseus? At what point does it stop being the ship of Theseus? Does it ever?

Experiences change things in us in small ways, and our desires and values shift over time.

Exercise: Think about yourself ten years ago. What was that person’s favorite song? Now think about your current self? What’s your favorite song right now? What changed about your relationship to that song from ten years ago? Can you imagine something similar happening to your current favorite song?

-break-

I also want to talk about interconnectedness. 

If all relationships are about figuring out who we’ll be together, what does figuring it out look like?

So I’m going to go back to that metaphor of the tree, with future selves as branches reaching out. It’s clear to me that in this metaphor the branches loop in and blend together, they twist and break off as well. Ultimately the branches all converge into one singular future

the one we all share

…

These convergences of the branches of our future selves.

This is where the figuring out part is.

The interconnectedness of all of our potential future selves is what ensures a comfortable path, one with care and deliberation, and a flexibility to chance

Exercise: What are some of your goals? How do you imagine being in the future? Are there multiple forms? Are there multiple future selves? Are they related? If they aren’t related, how can you make them more related? 

-break- 

Ok, this last part is one that I’m not really sure about yet. I want to talk about love and commitment. 

So, if all relationships are about figuring out who we will be together, how do we do it together?

I think that communication is important, obviously, I’ve heard that a bunch

I also think that having an understanding of change and of a continuum of identity is important, like the tree thing, and the ship of Theseus

this is so that we don’t assume too much about who we will be and who others will be in the future

and also it’s important to find connections between possible futures, between possible future selves of yourself, and between your future selves and the future selves of others. 

Finding these connections, and bringing these future selves closer together, is pretty important.

I haven’t been able to find a good way to go forward from there.

Maybe something will come of all this thinking.