last week, I did my best to place a wedge in between us and the smothering idea of “living your best life®”. I hope you’ve at least tapped that wedge a few times, driving it deeper. this week is the second of a three-part meditation on ways to think about our roads ahead.
and I thought before rising up on a hopeful updraft, it would be better first to swoop low over the abyss…
the worst case scenario
I think it was Anne Lamott who introduced me to this concept in her book Traveling Mercies. but when planning and dreaming about the future, fraught as it can be with known unknowns and unknown unknowns, it can be helpful to think:
what’s the worst case scenario here?
I know the Stoics beat me to it. but it can be strangely liberating when you run your play for the future through this lens.
when I’m nervously packing for a trip, zipping the last bag, mentally going through the days of everything I think I might need… okay, I’ve done my due diligence—now, what’s the worst that could happen?
I guess I might not have brought enough underwear—but I guess the place I’m going has places I could acquire new undies. okay… most of the things I’m bringing I could buy again there, or borrow (no, not undies)…
or what about when we moved to Mexico for a year… our life, our family. after we planned as much as we could and followed the protocols for US/Mexico, and arranged what could be arranged—what’s the worst that could happen?
well, we might run out of money for some unforseeable reason and be forced to set sail1 back home much sooner than expected… or we could be rejected at the border, in which case we could try at another border crossing (yes, border agents can have bad days too), and if they reject us at every turn? I guess we’d just have to turn around and figure out what our new plan A will be…
of death & undies
if you’re mildly imaginative, you may have come up with something worse than lost undies and rejection at the border. but if the worst case scenario involves us meeting an untimely demise (and if that’s not a likely outcome), then I say exclude it! and in the case that we’re dead, we won’t have any more problems anyways.
and a brief aside. there’s another way to think of death, of our mortality. the finite nature of our existence can fill us with a petrifying fear, or we can allow it to imbue our days, weeks and years as greater sense of preciousness. our most un-renewable resource, time. more valuable than gold…
and re: undies—if you are especially unlucky and travel to a land in which no undies may be found or procured, then there are probably more dire circumstances at hand than a mere pair fresh undies. so then, hypothetical situations in which undies acquisitions are impinged upon shall not be admissible in your court.
in general, I discourage the overuse of hypotheticals. it can lead you down too many mental paths that you’ll probably never need to walk, and it can make for messy and impractical problem-solving. but when you’re talking in worst case scenarios, hypotheticals are the name of the game.
I think of the worst case scenario proposition of the future as a reference point, not a guide to follow. (I think that’s called prepping.) at its best, it’s a tool for thinking about the future, not the whole picture.
writing exercise
as a writing exercise, sometimes I suggest people try writing along these worst case scenario lines. here’s the prompt for this part of the exercise:
write supposing you begin choosing in the direction of your worst impulses, suppose you indulge them, write exploring what you will be like, what your life will be like, across the rest of your life. (remember, this is for your eyes only)
what would you/your life look like if you indulged your worst/most base impulses?
I have used this prompt, partnered with some other self-fiction writing, to explore with some detail the worst case scenario along the trajectory of our own lives. it’s something we get hints of, on our worst behavior, but we seldom walk down to the bend in the road and look out as far as the path might carry us.
it can be dark stuff. we humans are capable of real wickedness. a sober look into a bad-outcome future might be the reality check some of us need.
it isn’t particularly fun, but that’s not really point. and I’ll give you the rest of the exercise next week.
I hope you find the concept and/or the writing idea helpful to you.
this is part two to a three-part meditation on ways to think about our roads ahead. here’s part one. if anything is odd, I wrote this on tour and mostly after midnight. have mercy on me.
thanks for being here. I write weekly sharing poetry, songs, musings, thoughts on creative life, and hopefully some encouragement… my first collection of poetry, Snowmelt to Roots, is available in my shop, (or on Amazon). and my music is available here.
tour info is here (with shows coming up in MO, KS & CA).
peace,
Z
we drove