The 10 Year Challenge

 For those of you who do not frequent Social Media (and who, probably, are the better for it). you may not be aware that currently there is a thing called the "10 Year Challenge" making its way through postings.

The concept is pretty simple: post a picture from 10 years ago and post a picture from 2022. Maybe make a brief comment on the state of your life then and now.  Await the "likes" or "hearts" that will come in (because, of course, who will "dislike" a personal story, even if they could?).

The postings really end up in three categories:  young people who grew up, people that were in a bad way physically/financially/personally that conquered their issues, and people that just look older.  There are some sorts of permutations of course, but really those are the options.

On a lark, I was paging through my Book of Face entries for a picture from 10 years ago from curiosity as much as anything else (One curious fact I discovered is there are not a lot of pictures from 10 years ago).  My explorations, based purely one what was posted, are pretty much the ones listed above:  Na Clann were much younger, I was much younger with less gray, I had just started throwing in the Highland Games (weight training was still years away),  and my Iai technique needed a lot of work (it still does, of course).  I was also apparently "on the cusp" of a brilliant publishing career (which pretty much has turned into this blog).

However, in my intellectual and gentle mockery of myself and what I thought the next 10 years would have looked like, it did give me pause to think about what the future next 10 years would look like.

This is where these considerations always break down.  It is good to have a retrospective from time to time, even if it just to poke fun at one's self and see one's shallowness displayed for the world to see.  And yet none of us live in the past: it is a known country, but a country that we can no longer visit except in pictures, memories, songs, and dreams.  The future is the unknown country that is hurtling towards at the breakneck speed of 24 hours a day.  

What might interesting - although I doubt it will ever happen - would be for people to post their future 10 year challenge.  Not so much pictures of course (if someone wants to use that aging software, great: I can assure you based on experience none of us will be nearly that attractive), as what we will be and what we will have done.  Committing themselves - perhaps recklessly or foolishly as the future, as that sage Yoda would say, is "always in motion" - but to a potential course or courses of action and outcome.

Some could argue that this is what planning and goals and life strategies are, and I suspect they are right.  But how many of them are willing to publicly say what they are privately striving for?  Yes, there are likely to be gaps and failures and unexpected twists and turns - that is life and no-one I know of faults you if, say, you have to move halfway across the country to a new state because you cannot find a job anywhere else (a total random example, of course) or you have a significant change in health (like our friend STxAR did). But acknowledging that is different from not talking about the future at all.

The past is history, one that we can regal and digest and laugh about.  The future - ah, that should interest us greatly, as that is where we will be spending the rest of our lives.