Two Worlds, the Future, and You (Part 1)

In the 11th book of his magnificent Dresden Files series, Jim Butcher has a conversation between two characters play out that has stuck in my head for years. A man has been sentenced to death for crimes he claims he didn’t commit. Convinced of his innocence, two characters talk about the best course of action to get him cleared of charges.

One wants to have a trial and let the facts out themselves with due investigation. The other, reading the writing on the wall, recognizes that the fact of the man’s innocence no longer matters—he will be killed if he’s taken into custody. Too much is at stake politically for his life to be saved.

I’ll not go into any further details because you should absolutely read Turn Coat (and all the other books in The Dresden Files, but I digress) and I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say that this conundrum leads to the above set of quotes and leaves me with this question:

When the world we live in doesn’t match up with the world that we should live in, what do we do?

It’s a bear of a question and I invite you to chew it over and wrestle with it for as long as you need to to come to your own conclusions. I’ll share mine with you today.

The General

There are broad, general things at play in the world with which you are going to disagree. There are laws, policies, norms, traditions, doctrines, and rules that will not jive with how you envision your ideal world to be. This is a sad, unavoidable fact, but one with which I think we must contend. There are going to be things in our ideal world that aren’t ideal. These things should minimized in our lives as much as possible and, where action can be taken to improve them, we should seek to do so.

We will never personally be able to stop war, though it is something that likely doesn’t exist in the world as it should be. What we can do is support leaders who value what we value and uphold what we want upheld. We may never stamp out homelessness entirely, but we can give to charities we agree with and believe in. Sexual assault may never disappear entirely from the world, but we can give way to a more compassionate society that listens to reports and raise our children to be better than our generation was and is.

These are not perfect solutions. There are none. For these broad societal issues, the world as we think it should be is just an ideal that we—I hope collectively—work toward. To function here, I think we need to be willing to accept some measure of imperfection, disappointment, and grief. We live with those things while we work to build better ones.

The Personal

The general is not the piece of this concept that most intrigues me. Here’s another question to chew over: what does your world as it should be look like? What’s a day like there? A week? A year?

Many of us find ourselves in places we wouldn’t have expected ten years ago. Life tends to happen whether we want it to or not. And while I believe that there is so much wisdom to be had in enjoying the journey and whatever leg of it you find yourself on currently, have you taken the time to examine your life and hold it up against your version of the-world-that-should-be? Beyond the odd daydream, have you designed such a thing?

I use the word design, because this is meant to be a blueprint for your personal life, not some vague imagining scrawled in crayon on printer paper and stuck on the fridge to be celebrated but ignored or filed away and forgotten. We are to be intentional. After all, as Butcher wrote, we must create the other world if it is to ever be.

How do we do that? What goes into blueprint design for the life we’d rather have? And shouldn’t we just be grateful for what we do have and the life we currently enjoy?

I’ll address the last part first and then come back around to the how.

It’s not ungrateful to want to better yourself, your situation, or your life. Love where you currently are. Find things about it that are good. Bask in whatever happiness you currently have. And, while doing so, recognize that life isn’t about destination. You haven’t yet arrived. You are moving. The secret here is that the-world-that-should-be never comes because our ideal will grow, shift, and change with us. We need to be striving for more. Complacency is death. To become truly static is damnation of the highest order.

If instead you find yourself in a less-than-happy situation, I’m not telling you to be toxically positive here. Fix what needs fixing. Change what can be changed. Work around the things that can’t. You can do something to better your spot. And then something else. Leaving a bad place is an option. Therapy is an option. Find the things that you have control over and improve them. You’ll find that more things come with time.

So, whether you’re very content where you are or miserable in your current life, how do you go about building the life that should be?

Defining where you are

The first step to designing your blueprint is to have a clear vision of how your life is now. What do you love about it? What don’t you? Why? How’s work? Your pay? Your family life? Your health? Do you like your hobbies? Do you spend time on them? This will take more time than you might think at first, but this step is crucial. You need to do some serious introspection here. Talk to those closest to you. Ask for their opinions. Dig deeper and further than you ever have. Define things you’ve never defined.

Ultimately, you need to have an understanding of where you currently are because defining where you want to be—especially initially—may have a lot to do with questioning how you feel about where you are.

You may also find that there are pieces of your current life that you will do anything to keep. That’s valuable and important information. You’ll encounter things you want to bring out more. You’ll find habits, attitudes, people, and other line items that don’t serve your happiness and you’ll see that you can do without them.

The wild thing here is that defining your current life is an ongoing part of this process. You can’t just do it once. You don’t know what you don’t know. So, in a year or two as you’ve started down this path to building the-world-that-should-be, you’ll want to reevaluate your world as it is again. And you’ll want to be cognizant of how you’ve changed. Things that once served you might not anymore. Things you felt were too risky to exist in your world-that-should-be might be more possible and real for you now.

What I’m driving at is that self-awareness and introspection are an important and ongoing part of building the-world-that-should-be. We tend to vastly overestimate our possible progress in one year and underestimate our progress across ten. Keep your finger on the pulse of your life and how you feel about it. It’s essential.

The world that should be

Next, you need to map out what your life should look like. This also is a necessarily ongoing project. This definition will change over years and miles. Refresh as necessary.

Here, you dream big but honestly. Do you really want to be a billionaire? Are you willing to do the things required to become one? Or is what you really want just the luxury of comfort and a lack of stress about money? Define what you want in concrete terms. Define what it means. Define what it will require. Do your research. Remember that you aren’t just dreaming here—you’re designing.

It’s absolutely acceptable to throw out a big idea to begin with. Vomit a big dream on the page and then break it down. Clean it up. Understand it. You need to make this real, after all. This is not the-world-that-can’t-be. It’s the-world-that-should-be. How can you make it so?

Find people who have had success in the areas you want to have success in. Learn their stories. Do the legwork to understand how it might work for you. Recognize that designing and then building your world-that-should-be is not the sort of thing that happens in a year or two—this is the work of a lifetime.

And interrogate your dreams. Do you really want to retire with buckets of cash at 40? Or are you just feeling burnt out by the prospect of working a nine-to-five every day until your late 60s? What will you do with yourself when you retire with all that money? Is it maybe truer of you that you just want the freedom to travel?

I’m not suggesting that retirement at 40 with obscene amounts of money isn’t a fine thing to want. If that’s real for you, chase it with enthusiasm and actionable goals. Similarly, a if a quiet life in the woods with your cats is what you’re really after and what will fill you, chase it. Whatever you feel your life should be is the right answer here. But I recommend you interrogate what you think you want. Find the why. Figure out if the why is best served by the dream. If it isn’t, adapt the dream.

Let go of the pressures of gurus or family that has come before you if those things don’t serve you. Design a life you actually want to live. Otherwise, you’ll never put in what it takes to build it.

Don’t take for granted that you already know what it is you want to do, be, become, or build. You well might, but doing the legwork and headwork of interrogating and tearing apart that dream is valuable. You need to know it in your bones, in your heart, in your soul. Sleep curled up next to it. Take it on dates. Charm it. Woo it. Let it charm you. Know its flaws. Know its secrets. This is as intimate a knowledge as you can possibly get because this isn’t just a second skin—this is you. You are defining the you you want to be. Put in the effort and the time. It won’t be easy.

And then . . .

I value my time and your time. Go check out part 2 for further ideas and reading on this topic and what I recommend you do after you’ve begun the process of designing your blueprint for the-world-that-should-be.