Has Your Future Passed?

April 28, 2004

"Nothing but a brilliant future behind me. What is one to do?"

You might guess that whoever made this despairing comment had failed in his or her working life. Well, you'd be wrong. These are the words of the twentieth century's most illustrious poet, TS Eliot, at the height of his fame.

As Eliot and millions of others have discovered, outer success doesn't guarantee high self-worth. No matter what we achieve, we can find a way to condemn or pity ourselves for dreams unfulfilled, promise undelivered.

One of my dreams, for example, was to be Bobby Kennedy. When he was murdered, I was 15. Over the next decade, he became one of my heroes. I loved the way he softened and grew after JFK died; I admired his empathy for the underdog. When I grew up, I was going to pick up his torch. I didn't, of course. It was, for me, a dumb dream: politics would have been a way of avoiding my mission, not fulfilling it. Yet to this day, I sometimes catch myself doing a Marlon Brando: "I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am" (On The Waterfront).  

The eminent psychiatrist Anthony Storr writes:

A whole career may be dedicated to the pursuit of power, or the conquest of women, or the gaining of wealth, only in the end to leave the person face to face with despair and a sense of futility, since he has never incorporated within himself a sense of his value as a person; and no amount of external success can ultimately compensate him for this.

Storr cites the ultimate example, Winston Churchill. If ever a person had cause to believe that he had made a difference, surely it was Churchill. Yet in his last sorrowful years, he lamented, "I have achieved a great deal to achieve nothing in the end."

Do you have a bright future behind you? Don't spend too much time grieving for it. Instead, push on with your exploring. That alone will create a future you will cherish. It will do so by bringing you home to yourself.

TS Eliot put it best (in "Little Gidding," written 15 years after the sad remark that began this ezine): "We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."