‘Will five years from now me care?’
That’s a question I’ve started asking myself about big life decisions, rejections, disagreements, and relationships. How much will I think about this thing in five years?
Do I have a five-year plan? No. As Phoebe Buffay once said, I don’t even have a ‘pl’. But I do have a philosophy (somewhat lifted from another classic sitcom, How I Met Your Mother) that is ‘Will five years from now me care?’. In the episode ‘The Time Travelers’ Barney tells Ted that he’ll regret not going to Robots vs. Wrestlers in 20 years. Ted spends the whole episode imagining future versions of himself and what they might be feeling. And while that episode ends on a bit of a downer (and the answer surely is always always go to Robots vs. Wrestlers if the opportunity presents itself), it’s actually not a bad philosophy- asking what will future me think about this?
Five years is like most things I come up with in my silly little brain: fairly arbitrary. But it actually also feels more tangible, more manageable than say ‘ten years’ or ‘fifty years. ’ I don’t know about you, but I can’t really imagine that far ahead in any useful way, but five years feels do-able. And while making a plan for five years time too feels insurmountable, asking myself; will I regret a particular thing or will it matter at all actually feels more rational, more grounded somehow. And lately, I don’t know if life is just in one of those transitional phases, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
I thought about this a week or two ago when I was reminded by one of those social media flashbacks that told me it had been 6 years since an Artistic Director made me cry. (I didn’t post that on social media then, but I went straight from being made to cry to a book signing, which did pop up). Does it matter why they made me cry? Do I really care what they think six years on? Did it matter to my career?
Unsurprisingly, the answer to all those is ‘no,’ and all that memory proved is that AD wasn’t very good at that part of their job (you know, the part where you don’t make people you’re supposedly supporting cry). And also that actually it’s just one person’s opinion on your worth, did that matter in five years, from a person I barely saw again and certainly won’t now? No.
The ‘Will it matter in five years’ has become a useful shorthand (and do feel free to pick your own arbitrary measure of time, as is the theme here it doesn’t matter) for assessing how important a thing is.
Suppose I continue on the theme of creative things. In that case, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt crushed over a rejection thinking it meant the end of any opportunities. Or that it truly would ‘make or break’ me. Honestly, do I think about those rejections a year later, never mind five? Equally, I can count on one hand the people who have ‘beaten’ me to those things and gone onto the kind of exponential success that makes it worth feeling sad/jealous about. And honestly? They probably would have anyway and/or had another stroke of luck that my getting into that thing or winning would not have impacted at all.
Similarly, with jobs. While there will always be an element of ‘Sliding Doors’ moments around the ‘what if’ of jobs that you get close to getting, I’m also increasingly realising that rarely will it ‘matter in five years’ because ultimately you fill in those losses with something else. So no, I didn’t get x y, and z jobs 5, 4, 3, 2 years ago. But I did something else instead, and most times, that’s been ok. Again rarely in life is there one opportunity, and one opportunity alone. Even if that elusive once-in-a-lifetime thing eludes you, there’s usually something else to take its place.
None of this is to say you either shouldn’t try or can’t be upset about the things not going your way. It’s more about not letting it totally consume you as I once did and occasionally am still guilty of doing. It’s about letting go of the pressure on everything to be the big thing, the big break, the big change. It seems that these things happen, or they don’t mostly out of our control or at least out of our control of how much we worry about them or how much pressure we put on them to be THE THING.
Take, for example, a well-known Bard-oriented theatre company that recently ran quite a bit of competition for playwrights. And my god, I have never seen people get so bent out of shape over not being selected for it. Now granted, a large portion of these were a certain demographic of quite entitled individuals who are used to getting their way. But you would have thought the Warwickshire writer himself had taken away their only chance at having a play put on. I wanted to say ‘my dudes’ (it’s always the dudes) will it really matter in five years if you don’t get this thing right now? Will it? (pardon the pun). The answer is probably not.
Now, that’s not to say I don’t hope that, in this example, the writers selected don’t have wonderful career-altering times. Of course, I do. (Not least because one of them is a friend, and I want good things for my talented friends). I hope this is utterly a breakthrough moment in whatever they need it to be. But if it’s not, that’s okay, it won’t matter in five years because they’ll have done a dozen more wonderful things by then.
And even for the bitter men of Facebook, bent out of shape over it. I hope that in five years it doesn’t matter to them either, because actually that’s no way to live is it? Hanging on to the what could have been or the wrongs done.
Now don’t get me wrong again, when it comes to being wronged by people, I am a child of Taylor Swift, and I don’t let go easy and am a fiend for revenge. But like Ms Swift, I’m learning that karma is a wiley cat, and the best revenge is a well-executed living of your best life.
For example, a person I considered one of my closest friends got me fired from my job. This was about ten years ago. Now for a long time, that job was somewhere I wanted to work and losing it mattered very much (not least cos a girl’s gotta eat and all that). For the longest time, it was the biggest betrayal, the biggest failing, and one I was convinced I’d never recover from. It was getting fired from the biggest theatre in my city (spoiler alert etc.). Career-ruining disaster I would never recover from. But guess what? Five years on from that, it didn’t matter, I moved on, there were other jobs, and I was fine. Ten years on, I don’t care about the job one bit, and I’m glad I didn’t stay in a job I didn’t want to do anyway. It didn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still angry at that person. It doesn’t mean I hope they walk past a bookshop and see a book I wrote on a thing they loved and think, ‘I used to know her and I fucked it up.’ (that my friend is the Taylor Swift school of revenge).
And similar applies to friends, friendships, relationships, and arguments. Is it worth getting angry at this person? Will this thing matter in five years? If I let it fester will it? Do I need to call it out or let it slide? Is it worth having this argument with a coworker? These are harder questions to answer. But for a feisty redhead (albeit a fake one) with an Autistic sense of justice, not arguing with people is often a challenge. But it helps me think ‘will it matter in five years’ if I have this argument?
I think this too, on the hurt people have done to me. Unfortunately, this one is more likely to matter in five years. So yes, the friend who screwed me over and screwed me out of a job? Still matters. The women who made me feel I was no longer welcome in a choir I love? Well, we’re two years into the statute of limitations, still matters. The PhD supervisor who said I wrote like a journalist as an insult? It still matters and still massively impacts my confidence and self-worth. Or on the things I’ve accidentally done, hurt a friend who felt I betrayed them over a piece of work I took? It still matters, and I’m still sorry. Or the former colleague who was frankly a raging bitch to me, but also had a tough time in life after that, matters to me that I was a raging bitch back, Conversely the boy who made me wait all night for him to come to my birthday? You’re just a fun lyric in a Taylor Swift song now (idiot, both of us). The five-year rule is harder to apply in these situations, but it’s still a useful barometer.
The five-year rule also works the other way. If I’m on the fence about whether it’s worth fighting for, I ask, ‘will it matter in five years’. Am I debating a job? Will it matter in five years? Will I regret not trying? Submitting for something, will I regret it in five years if I can’t say I didn’t try? Fighting to not fall out with someone, or to stand up for what’s right…Will I regret that in five years?
I mostly use it for creative stuff right now (not least because what is a career…I’ve given up having any direction there, but I digress). Is it worth killing myself for right now? Is it worth giving everything for now? I’ve had yeses and nos. Was my first play, all the extreme heartache, tears, and frankly bad treatment at times worth it? Absolutely not. I could have got there another way. However, was putting a play on despite Covid trying to scupper us, with my own company worth every ounce of fight? Yes, I am 100% for the people I did it with and what I achieved. And of the former, three years from then I think I was foolish. Five years from then I know it really won’t matter anyway.
It also works in reverse another way. The sheer relief of looking back and going, ‘where would I be if five years from now?’ and knowing you chose okay. If not quite chosen well, then distinctly ok. I look back, and I’m relieved that I didn’t take a job in Leeds, didn’t get another in Nottingham, didn’t move back to London, didn’t stay in another job. I look back at all those things and say, ‘five years from now, I thanks you.’ I’m as grateful for all the times I didn’t sacrifice everything for art or work as I am for the times I did.
It works, too, for what I did fight for. Five years ago, I debated submitting my thesis for book proposals and wondered if it was worth fighting for. And now I have five books, five! I’m glad past me fought for those; five years in the future, I is really grateful for every moment of scrappy hustling five, four, three, two, and one year ago. And five years from now, I will hopefully be grateful for all the work I’m putting in.
And while the five years from now rule might sound like a way to let go of things- and it is to an extent- it’s also an impetus to put the work in. Five years from now, I will thank myself for putting the work in on my new book. Five years from now, I will thank myself for putting everything I have into the creative work I’m doing for the novel that might never be published because I will want to know I did everything I could for the things that matter.
But a new, quite novel thing to come out of the ‘five years from now’ philosophy is also one of rest and play. While I will be grateful for the work five years from now, she also will be grateful I started putting effort into other things. Whether learning to skate or giving myself a new hobby and skill. Whether it’s going to hockey games and finding joy in something new. Or whether it’s friendships. Five years ago, I actually wouldn’t believe I had friends I liked, loved, and, more importantly, trusted not to hurt me the way five, ten years ago, I was hurt by friends. And investing in those will matter as much as the other stuff in five years.
So ‘will it matter in five years?’ is a good measure- both positive and negative of what might matter. Of course, we can never know. But it’s the step back, the perspective that has really helped me (and might help those dudes on playwriting facebook groups, too).
I love this and will be stealing the "will it matter in five years time?" for myself and others ❤️