Your actual life

Why not celebrate the entry of the first Royal Australian Navy Fleet into Sydney Harbour by lighting up a warship? Why not celebrate anything you feel like celebrating? (Australian National Maritime Museum)

Some people live in the past. I’ve spent years living in the future in my mind.

Whatever I was doing was a means to an end. It was a train trip to some better destination.

During the one year I spent working in public school, I used every single one of my prep periods to research what I might do next, from teaching English in China to moving to Nashville or LA to be a professional musician.

My circumstances felt intolerable, so I escaped them any chance I could. My body was there, but my mind wasn’t, similar to the way I might get through a medical or dental procedure that I have to be conscious for.

I think of the road trips I’ve experienced — how the time spent on all of those interstate highways held so little intrinsic value. Why would I want to be present for that?

These days, however, it is unacceptable to me to live in the future that way. I try to set up my life so that I’m not just waiting to get through another winter or making the best of another year of an unfulfilling job. I try to remember that whatever I’m experiencing is my actual life, not a transitional state on the way there. If it’s not working, I can change it instead of just going through the motions.

Living in Atlanta taught me that the suffering I had grown accustomed to growing up in Maine — the misery of blustery autumn and spring days, not to mention the fierce cold of winter — was a choice. Here was a place you could play tennis year round. A place where daffodils were blooming by Valentine’s Day. You didn’t have to wait for better weather to start enjoying yourself.

Ironically, now that I’m back in Maine by choice, I have figured out how to move past the listless waiting that characterized my adolescence and early adulthood there. I’m not stuck doing homework on a cold Sunday afternoon, wishing it were Friday again.

The shift began with the acknowledgement that my circumstances are the result of my choices, and if I don’t like what I’m getting, I can make different choices. I never have to be trapped.

If I feel trapped, I can consider my situation from a variety of angles. Simply getting good winter gear was enough to transform my relationship with the weather. Getting a different job has also been a game changer.

While I acknowledge the privilege inherent in having choices, I have noticed that, most of the time, a different job or place to live was enough; it didn’t have to be a better one. Whatever the new thing was, it made my life more interesting. Instead of skipping ahead, I was happy to read the page I was on.

The point isn’t that I became happier when I changed things. Recognizing my power to change things was what did it. Ironically, that has allowed me to embrace things as they are without needing to change them in order to be happy. From there, I can make incremental changes that I’m satisfied with instead of holding out for a completely new life.

Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of people who believe, like I used to, that they will be happier when something changes in the future. The things they want tend to be massive and out of their control, like selling a screenplay to a major Hollywood studio or launching a business that will put them on the cover of Forbes.

The path to happiness that I see is to focus on what you can influence, however modest it may seem. Start with what’s working and build on that instead of seeking to throw it all away at the first available opportunity.

Doing this, you make the most of what you already have, meaning that you’re appreciating your current life instead of holding out for a better one. That’s how your actual life becomes a better one.

While I still have things I am looking forward to in the future, my delusions of grandeur are gone. My dissatisfaction with my life as it is has disappeared. It’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be.

I will never be on the cover of Forbes. I may never achieve anything particularly impressive. Hopefully, I’ll be too busy enjoying my days to care.