Someone once told me that if you feel an urgent need to accomplish a goal, that that sense of urgency is conjured from your future self at the finish line of said goal. In other words, your future self is sending you this energy to let you know you are on the right path. And that soon you will be where you’re meant to be. There have only been a few times in my life I have felt this urgency and most of those times have happened recently in the past year or two. But a constant urge of mine that my present self has yet to meet the future version of is to live in New York.
I have had this goal for as long as I can remember and because of that I have made an effort to visit as much as I can. The longing to be in that city has become so intense that the past 3 times I visited were all within a 12-month period. Not every trip is perfect, see previous article, but the urge to be there and to experience the culture and atmosphere has never wavered. I want to blame my lack of financial accruement as the reason why I’m not living there now, but upon recent reflections I realized it was the lack of purpose I had for myself. The awakening of this truth was jarring at first but was not unlike the past revelations I had discovered about myself at this stage of my late thirties.
For the majority of my life, I never gave much thought about what I wanted to do for a living. Growing up, I came from an environment where you take any job that will make ends meet. But perhaps what was more influential for my career trajectory was being told college would guarantee a substantial career, which would ultimately result in financial stability. Therefore, my goals became two-dimensional, more logical and pragmatic because that was the mindset that was needed to get into college and to pick a major. Consequently, I never had the privilege of exploring my creativity despite the fact that I was a product of two artists.
Growing up I saw my parents’ creativity slowly dim and get pushed to the side from the burden of having to keep a roof over their head and their three kids. And as I got older, I saw how heavy that weighed on each of them. Perhaps that was the catalyst to them drifting apart, in addition to less than desirable circumstances and being young as well as naïve. But all I could decipher as a kid was they were unhappy, stressed, and overwhelmed. Feeling that tension at such a young age, had me conclude that it was all due to their lack of money. Money was also often used as the reason why we couldn’t go to certain places or have certain things. And when the concept of money is introduced to a child and is constantly used as a reason why someone is stressed out or is the reason why you are hearing no over and over again from your parents, you grow up to think that money is the key to happiness or being able to do anything worthwhile.
But then someone offers you a path to the financial freedom you crave, and because you’re not born into riches or you’re lacking an example of a steady way to retain financial stability, you take what’s offered, just to get a glimpse of it. Which ultimately led me to float throughout much of my life, pursuing careers solely on the idea of a steady income, resulting in me taking multiple paths but none of them leading me to a passion. Eventually over time all those paths shifted my thinking and had me believe that the pursuit of fortune was the only drive I needed.
But at some point, it wasn’t enough, and it made me wonder if my parents ever felt this way. I always suspected my father did, as the whole house could feel when he was having a bad day, but my mother was more of a mystery. Up until I got older and she needed my help looking for jobs, which resulted in her finding the last job she would have before she passed away.
I can remember the air of vulnerability and how it surrounded both of us when I asked what kind of jobs she wanted to apply to or have me search for. At the time, she was recently let go from a grocery retail chain, where she had been a bakery manager for a number of years. I knew how much this hurt her, even though she complained about the job all the time. Because this manager role became her only outlet for creative expression, she took pride in the work she put in even if that meant working in an environment that didn’t appreciate her skills. I remember thinking how much I wanted her to continue to have that space for herself and that maybe the next step would mean she would have to take more risks. However, my mom and I were never the ones to take risks or deviate from what we know, let alone venture out into unknown territory. She played it safe, and for a while I continued to do the same.
When she eventually found another job, it was at a place she worked before, but she was optimistic about starting a new chapter there. Unfortunately, just a few years later she passed away. Although I will never get to witness the type of career my mom wanted to have for herself, I don’t think it was ever about a career for her after she had my me and my siblings. It was more about being able to have safety, security, and balance. For my mom that was ownership, whether it be a home or business of her own. I used to think that all that passion and spark for creativity morphed into a more urgent need for keeping her children safe. Which was why all of my mom’s goals shifted to things that would bring her and us safety and stability as opposed to a “dream job”.
Additionally, I don’t think my mom ever got to consider what she wanted to do in life for too long because what she really wanted to do back then was to pursue an Art degree. However, this was not supported by her parents. Therefore, my mom had limited options and no real desire to finish college. She instead married my dad and had me in her early twenties.
But the more I wreck my brain for memories of my mother while grieving her loss, the more I’m confronted with signs that my mom’s urge for creativity never vanished and alternatively was just waiting to be set free. I see that in her early drawings, the clothes that she made for me and my siblings and pictures of cakes she decorated for us on our birthdays. Beyond physical signs, I also search my memories for indications of her suppressed passions and dreams.
One memory my sister and I think about often is a conversation our mom had at a Christmas gathering the day before she passed away about starting her own business. She talked to her brother, my sister and me about how she wished she could start one, but it just wasn’t the right time, as if she accepted defeat of ever owning something of her own. She gave excuse after excuse that day and because I take on most of my mother’s fears, I too, stayed in the air of caution when she discussed her hesitation. Ultimately my mother wouldn’t be able to start a business within the time she had left but neither of us knew that. But what we both understood was the possibilities of dreaming and considering what we really wanted for ourselves was not a real option. Even without children or a husband, pushing away my hopes and dreams for stability still existed for me too.
But the truth was the complete opposite of what we believed it to be, and that is that stability is not guaranteed. My mom lived her whole life chasing that goal. A goal not built on a passion but simply based on fear of losing it all. And in the end a steady job didn’t provide that for my mother. It hurts that she never got to live out her dreams as an artist. But that need to start her own business is something I think about over and over. Because I do feel like it was calling out to her like New York calls out to me. But if that’s the case, what version of my mom’s future self exists on the other side of that dream? Why did she feel the urge to have that conversation with her family the day before she passed away?
I started writing this as a love letter to New York as a way to explain my obsession with it, and how it all most likely has to do with my new realization for my passion for writing. But that’s the thing I love most about writing, the depths and layers you discover are never in the actual subject of what you write about. Much like other art forms, writing can tell you so much about someone by going beyond what you see in front of you. The value comes from how you feel about it.
To answer my previous question, I think the future version of my mom, the one that drove the need to have a conversation about following dreams was her spirit, which still lives on today. Even though the conversation weighed heavy with my mother’s fears, her creative spirit, her unconditional love resides in me and my siblings. I trust her spirit was finally set free and not bound to the fears and doubt that life accosted her with. The need for my mother to have that conversation with her family may have been her future self knowing that this would be one of the last ones we have all together, and she didn’t want to have us ever forget about having the drive to pursue what you really want. And perhaps my mother wanted to ultimately pass the urge she had within herself on to all of us. At the same time, the conversation also served as a final reminder that even though she worked so hard at a job she barely tolerated, that creative spark never left her.
Before my mom passed away, I felt that I was floating from job to job with no purpose driving me towards a specific path. But now I know it’s to write and maybe the constant feeling I get, the desire to live in New York is something like the spirit of my mother. Perhaps I feel the spirits of all the artists that came before me while I’m there. Perhaps I feel the energy of all the artists that are currently there overwhelmed by the same struggle my mother and I tried to run away from. Or maybe it is from my future self finally living the life we always wanted by embracing the uncertainty of following a passion.
Whatever the reason, I hope I make my future self and most importantly the spirit of my mother proud.
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