Keep reaching.
This is the goal of any pledge. It connects us to forward movement, which puts time on our side. Put it there, keep it there.
The first thing any sailor must do before setting sail is hoist anchor. In our metaphor, you are the sailor, and the anchor is the weight of your past. While we have no past when we are born, it accumulates every day thereafter. Piling it up can bring, with luck, wealth and adventures. But living in your past can also make you stodgy and immobile.
Take Lot’s wife from Genesis 19. Planning to destroy the corrupt city of Sodom, God sends two angels to warn Lot, the one good man living there, to leave with his family immediately. They are specifically instructed not to look back as they flee, but Lot’s wife cannot help herself. Glancing over her shoulder, she sees everything she has ever known go up in flames. For returning to her past, she is turned into a pillar of salt—probably, I have always imagined, from evaporating tears.
Lot’s wife pivots on the tragic. But what of those folks who reside happily, even smugly, in the comfort zone of the familiar?
We all know people who prefer life in the yesteryear. Their now is then.
Take what I call the Dylan cult. In my generation, many people have stalled in the 1960s. Over half a century later, their thinking, values, and styles are still permeated by the spirit of the Summer of Love. These folks require every rendition of “The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” to be the exact iconic bootleg they first heard in 1964. Anything else is a betrayal of their youth. As with the baseball enthusiast remembering stats, there is something charmingly sentimental in this exercise, but to stay in the past is to be doomed. Baseball has moved on, Dylan has moved on, only they have not?
The peril of nostalgia is the way it arrests evolution. Have you ever found yourself using the phrase “I’m one of those people who [fill in the blank]”: “needs to have a plan for everything,” “hates change,” “loves to go against the current,” “is always anxious”? Doubtless you have come to think of yourself thus because of experiences you’ve had, and you’re likely right that, at one time or another, you may have indeed been a person who … However, it’s worth taking a look at whether those qualities still apply to you today or whether you are relying on a shopworn idea of yourself.
Unless we embrace the condition of change, the past will act as an anchor, preventing growth. I’ve always been an advocate of habit—but with time, unchecked or unnoticed habits will hold you back.
What if you were to make change your actual habit instead?
Not an easy chore. We know ourselves by what we have been and done—what we have accomplished and the experiences we have had. Yet we can also be stopped cold by feeling we have much to lose if we let the past be left behind.
How can we become comfortable with change in order to remain one step ahead of what is past? Here are five suggestions.
Identity can be an attachment that holds you back, just as surely as an overdose of nostalgia. Maybe you think of yourself as an extrovert or a daydreamer or type A. Yes, having a clear sense of yourself is closely related to having confidence and good self-esteem. But when was the last time you decided to opt out of something because it “wasn’t like you”? Stay in the past, choose not to change, and like Lot’s wife, you will remain immobile, frozen in place, looking to stop time and going not much of anywhere. Hand in glove with your archnemesis, status quo bias.
Learn to imagine yourself differently. Look to the example of Hokusai, the Japanese woodcutter of the eighteenth century, who had a process that allowed him to sail through life without getting caught in his past. He shifted his identity and his style constantly, using more than thirty names in his lifetime. He moved frequently, immersing himself in a whole new atmosphere, finding novel subject matter—whether it was courtesans, peasants, or, most famously, Mount Fuji—reordering his entire lifestyle. For him, renaming and shifting identity was a lifelong practice. This process allowed him to be productive over a very long while, impacting even today—his invention of manga is still alive in contemporary cartoons—on how we see things.
Another polymorph, Robert Zimmerman, came to New York City in 1963. Ten years later, he left as Bob Dylan. By splitting himself into person and persona, he was able to compartmentalize. Robert Zimmerman, the person, had responsibilities, obligations, and a somewhat predictable existence. Bob Dylan, the persona, did not. Zimmerman could give Dylan permission to try anything, sending him out to test the waters of opportunity the way miners test the oxygen in a mine by sending in a canary first. (Most handy when the criticism is bad. Then Zimmerman can say, “Wasn’t me, Dylan did it.”)
While most of us don’t go to the extreme of creating a persona, it can be useful to think of a before and after. The moment you marry, have a child, divorce. Even if you do not actually take on a new name, give yourself the option, with a milestone, to adopt a generational tag. Before a certain event, you are Jane the First. After this event, you are Jane the Second. Passing beyond an event of major significance—such as childbirth or a major surgery—gives you the right to behave differently.
At the other end of the spectrum, you might try dissolving your identity completely. I’ve always been fascinated by Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy of movies from the 1960s, starring Clint Eastwood. The first film, A Fistful of Dollars, sets the pattern for its sequels (For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). Eastwood plays a mysterious unnamed gunslinger who inserts himself into a gang war, playing each side off the other. He settles some debts on both sides and then rides out of town. It’s mythmaking storytelling, based on Akira Kurosawa’s classic, Yojimbo. We know nothing about the hero at the start and just as little at the end. He rarely speaks, gives nothing away about where he came from, what he has done, or who he is. He is named Nobody, defined not by his past but only by his actions in the present.
What would happen if you went into your next meeting, sales call, or social situation determined to emulate Eastwood: no past, no list of credits, no reputation, not even a name. You cannot reveal or use anything from your past—not what you do, where you went to college, who you know. Your only revelations involve the present or future. Would that work for you or against you? Would the situation be good, bad, or ugly? Your objective is to free yourself to be whatever and whoever you need to be right now.
Here is a simple exercise that allows you to stand in the middle of your living room and challenge your status quo by changing your physical center.
Stay firmly planted with your weight evenly distributed between both feet.
As ever, be aware of your breathing: in on the work, out on the release.
Take your arms into a high V with an inhale. Then exhale and let the arms flop.
Next, reach your arms out from each shoulder to both sides on the inhale, then exhale, letting the arms cross the front of your body as you drop. Bend your knees with the drop.
Last, lift both arms to the left side and inhale; exhale, dropping your arms across to the right, bending your knees. Then reverse to the right.
Repeat this set of three until your body has memorized what to do next without the brain having to think. Your body makes its own connections.
Now we’ll widen your center by swinging. First, broaden your stance. Then drop your whole torso, bending over your knees in one flop. That’s your new center. Swing your torso to the right and then the left. Having your weight down the middle or off to the side of your center changes what we call your placement, where you carry your weight in your feet and legs.
These are different identities for your body. Be aware that being very grounded conveys a sense of confidence and security that is slightly diminished when you are off center. Think of locating a new center as finding a new you for the day. Shall you be striding forth strongly or—pitched slightly forward or back—just a tad vulnerable? Each placement has its advantages for both your skeleton and your character. You will feel it, others will see it.
Carried to an extreme, being too far off your center is but a way station to a fall. This you can use as a heads-up to go with the flow. While I am not looking to promote falling in your life, if you feel a fall coming, here’s a clue. Try not to fight back.
We fear letting go; we worry that in leaving our past for the unknown, we will fail along the way. What if we do? There is no growth without risk. Remember as children, learning to walk, we faced risk bravely. Watch closely: you’ll see kids fall often and, most of the time, without injury.
Can this capacity be maintained as we get older? Bones grow brittle, our muscles lose the mass to cushion the fall and our bodies the flexibility to descend with grace. Done accidentally, falling is a dangerous thing and rightfully avoided whenever possible. But done with control, it is empowering. If you expect to fall, are prepared to fall, or can accept a fall and do not resent what appears to be a loss of control, you will find the body much more capable of coping with losing its balance. Being able to fall physically is a sign of strength. Both failing and falling are specialized genres of action, and handled well, both are an art form. The Japanese hold special classes in the techniques of falling for their elders, a demographic held in high esteem by their culture.
The key to all well-executed physical falls is in their recovery. If you know how you are getting up from your fall, you will feel better on the way down. There are many varieties of fall, but all have one basic requirement: you cannot hesitate on the way down. You must relax into the fall and let it go straight to its mark. Resisting on the way down causes injury.
Knowing how we are getting up makes falling so much more welcoming. Check out Buster Keaton’s pratfalls on YouTube. The five-minute reel of Keaton’s best stunts will make you wince with their brutality and then smile shortly thereafter. The tragedy of the fall is turned around swiftly each time by Keaton’s rebound. Once knocked to the ground, Keaton never stayed down long. He always used the momentum of his fall to recover, usually in the very next frame. But of course, in his case, he planned the disasters of the past—his falls to the ground—for their spectacular escapes into a future. He always knew where he was going before he fell. Like Keaton, you can take the mystery out of letting go by thinking ahead. Imagining yourself in a future makes leaving the past more appealing. Be brave. Hit the deck without pause. Use your momentum down for your recovery. That’s the only way it works.
The same is true of your decision-making process. Hesitation can cause injury.
A major obstacle to action—and thus change—is procrastination. Some people are lazy (they put off work). Some are overly ambitious (they commit to more work than they can handle). Some lack the confidence to act. Some fear failure, manufacturing conditions that make success impossible. Some need more data and more planning before they’re ready to work (and there’s never enough data). Some have too many distractions luring them away from what they should be doing. It’s all the same.
We tend to think of procrastination exclusively as a short-run issue and fail to detect the damage it does to our long-term prospects. For example, we all want financial security and know that saving money for our later years is the best way to achieve it. But short-term needs appear—a vacation, a better car, a family emergency—so we delay putting money away. It’s always something. This is how long-term goals are overwhelmed by short-term considerations. If we can’t get past the distraction of immediate gratification in the short run, we have no chance of creating a solid long run.
The procrastinators among us prefer to put off until later rather than acting now. Studies show that the procrastinator’s brain is very good at feeling future rewards without doing the work. Jane the Procrastinator can become Jane the Second without passing the trial because she already feels the reward to come without experiencing the ordeal. I’m afraid this is not how things happen. A good scare might prompt action for Jane, but short of that, here’s a thought.
Facing any onerous or unappealing task (the kind you always put off), ask yourself: How little can I tolerate right now? In other words, what’s the least I can do to get started? We procrastinate because our tolerance for what lies ahead is compromised. The task is too daunting or time-consuming or frustrating. We don’t file our tax return on time because gathering the scattered stubs and receipts is annoying. We don’t write the term paper because the prospect of sitting alone in front of our laptop is intimidating.
What I’m recommending is thinking small—very small—so you can ignore the real or imagined monumentality of what you’re facing. If you’re supposed to be writing a lengthy report, what’s the bare minimum you can do on day one? Assemble your research? Create a file system for your notes? On day two, do the bare minimum again. Write a paragraph? Write an outline? And so on, until you’re deep enough into the project that forward momentum is unavoidable. For the procrastinator, the only bad choice is no choice.
Accumulated successes, whether baby steps or big leaps forward, can create a creeping entitlement where we start to believe the world owes us. Earning success becomes expecting it.
Few of us are spared. Creeping entitlement is why we get angry at friends who don’t respond to our calls or emails immediately (our time is precious; we should not be kept waiting). Or why we justify any of our selfish or hurtful actions by telling ourselves, “I’m worth it.”
Entitlement is way more disabling than empowering. At first, it makes us sloppy. We cut corners, bend the rules to suit ourselves, and assume we can get away with it. Sloppiness becomes our “new normal.” Eventually, entitlement stops us in our tracks.
Get out of your own way; do not expect what you have been in the past to make your today. The wealth of our past does not entitle us to anything other than—with luck—another shot at tomorrow. Do not believe that if you set the target in the past, envisioned the result, prepared for it, executed on point, and made it happen that the universe is now whispering in your ears, You were right. How’d you get to be so clever?
Creeping entitlement is not an issue when I’m confined to the relatively meager resources of the dance world. Frankly, there’s not enough money in dance to permit the queenly extravagances of limousines or wasted rehearsal periods that I regard as entitlement. Every hour and penny must be accounted for. Things change in the bigger-budget environments of Hollywood and Broadway, where creature comforts are abundant and whims are blithely indulged. It’s very easy to go from being grateful that an assistant asks if you’d like some coffee to demanding a freshly ground cup as your birthright. You don’t even notice that you’re changing. That’s how creepy entitlement can be.
I wage my war on entitlement on two fronts. It begins with physical self-reliance. I open my own doors, carry my own bags, place my own phone calls, answer all emails, and eat my own cooking. I don’t cancel appointments without an extraordinary reason (and I expect the same courtesy in return). I don’t exempt myself from the rules that I expect everyone else to follow (I’m special, but not that special!). These are personal strategies that consistently snap me back to now, reminding me that from moment to moment, all I’m entitled to is the desire to do my best.
Learning to recognize the end is a skill that comes with age. When you are still young, being able to recognize that the past is complete is a rare accomplishment. Few see the endpoint when there is still so much of the future ahead.
However, record-breaking runner-turned-physician Roger Bannister did just this in 1954. As millions of people around the world followed his seemingly impossible quest to break the four-minute mile—without any sponsorships or coaching network to sustain him—Bannister coordinated his already brutal training regimen with a life outside the sport. He integrated his workouts with the rigorous demands of medical school, squeezing in his runs during his lunch break at a track two train stops away from St. Mary’s Hospital, where he was a student.
Pursuing his mostly self-designed and imposed regimen, Bannister broke the four-minute mile with a time of 3:59:4. Spectacular. He was recognized around the world for the achievement. But practically the next day, following just two more races, he reported back to work at St. Mary’s. Showing a thorough grasp of the need to move forward with his life, as well as a good deal of perspective and humility, he said, “Now life in earnest was beginning.”
Making an adjustment of this magnitude from one area of accomplishment to another requires both courage and confidence. For Bannister, this was a huge adaptation. Here you had a guy who was acknowledged as the fastest man on the face of the earth, treated like an international hero, and suddenly he is going back to medical school to become a professional like everybody else. How does that work? You might guess that the answer is anticipation. Bannister had already laid the groundwork for his next step when he enrolled in medical school years earlier. He kept going, making his second act not just longer but more satisfying than his first. He was later quoted as saying, “I’d rather be remembered for my work in neurology than my running. If you offered me the chance to make a great breakthrough in the study of the automatic nerve system, I’d take that over the four-minute mile right away. I worked in medicine for sixty years. I ran for about eight.”
But note: the corner that Bannister turned was not a total disconnect. They rarely are. Both running and doctoring expressed his intention and his pledge to investigate the workings of the human body. It was all the same practice to him. If his path were to be mapped, imagine the yin/yang symbol and then trace it with your finger. You will find that if you start clockwise on the circle, you will finish counterclockwise. Sometimes a path that makes sense in hindsight could never be comprehended at its start. When making big choices in our lives, the best course is to recognize continuity in our intention. Thus we are neither repudiating nor repeating the past but, rather, respecting it as we move on. Each day prepares your next.
Whether it’s worshipping Dylan, reliving your high school football years, or trying to fit in to your old jeans, nostalgia encourages us to recall days when surely we were better off—younger, more potent, happier, even perhaps taller. Visiting the past has its place in a life well lived, but a visit to the past needs to be exactly that—a visit. Your past is past. Let’s learn to leave it there. This, too, is a discipline.
The two people I know who best exemplify a comfortable existence visiting the past, yet living in the present, are Marilyn and Irving Lavin. We’ve been friends so long that none of us remembers how we met. Both are noted classicists and distinguished art historians—he a revered Bernini expert and emeritus scholar at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, she an expert on Piero della Francesca. Irving is eighty-nine, Marilyn ninety-one.
Irving and Marilyn are trained to deal with the past. They go in, look at what’s there, analyze it, and pull what they can use into now. For scholars, this is a daily practice. While the Lavins are fluent in the historical past, their comfort zone is the present: they hike, ski, and fully exist in the now, without fear. I witnessed how this fearlessness keeps stagnation away one Sunday in early spring 2016. They drove from Princeton to a village in the Catskills, where I was entrenched for six weeks to work. After watching rehearsals, we took long walks through the area’s fields and hills. I noticed their vigorous disregard for where they planted their feet in the muddy ground, heedless of the possibility of a sprained ankle or knee. Coping with the consequences of the future unknown is part of their adventure. This is growth, and they take a small step in that direction daily.
The Lavins, grounded in a marriage of sixty-six years, still find novelty in one another’s company as they awake every morning at the same time and poke each other, asking, “Are you still alive?” And then Marilyn tells Irving, “Get up, Irving, start the day.” A little poke is a great beginning for large discoveries.