Welcome back to “What Zoe Read,” my reading column that appears at no fixed interval for maximum surprise!
Today, I leave my stack of books moldering because an unusual personal reading event has just passed. Every seven years in late May or so, I read a letter from my seven-years-younger self that has been sealed since its writing. A friend and I have done this faithfully since the mid-aughts, though we rarely talk otherwise. We’re like two very young planets coming into the occasional conjunction.
My friend and I are seven years apart, so at this, our 3rd septennial, she’s reached the age I was last time we convened. I hope I help her think about her future the way an older mom recently talked to me about having a 17-year-old; that reminds me of what’s ahead.
Last time, at age 33, I realized I needed to release cultural disdain I carried about aging, particularly turning 40. I realized that logically many of the things that for me were hard when I was 33 would likely have improved in seven years. Not that I anticipated no new difficult things, but I imagined parenting would be less fragmenting and intellectual pursuits would be easier, and I was right in those things.
I think the direction I sense now, as I squint off in the distance to myself in 2033 – Lord-willing* – is to ponder my responsibilities towards children hurtling ever onward to adulthood and to my parents as they age. Dad was helping me move heavy furniture the other day and remarked soberly that he wants to do it while he can. No guarantees.
A difficulty for raising children is that I’m not clear for what sort of world I am preparing them. Generally, I’m trying to set my kids up for strength in the local real world: looking out for others, investing in good friends, working on financial habits, and eyeballing practical jobs they might do one day. Meanwhile, the TechBros are building their Towers of Babel like they’ve never studied the ancients. The surveillance state grows and grows. God is sovereign, and yet, we will probably pay in the short-run for the hubris of the proud and powerful.
I was salsa-ing recently with Matthew (dancing is 20x better than arguing with people online, though that’s occasionally sporting too, as a rare treat), when I randomly opined that we needed to campaign to increase social dancing broadly in culture to get people out of online argument silos. (All of it probably just feeding the Machine.) He opined back that they would just argue on the dance floor. (I wonder how he knows.) But at least there would be food, music, exercise, and eye contact!
That’s my general prescription for life: eat decent food, homemade whenever possible, with people whenever possible. Talk. Encourage. Make art. Play music. Dance. Take risks. Be at least occasionally spontaneous.
As I closed out my 2019 note-to-self, I quoted a friend who sensed God was preparing to expand my ministry and influence. I think it’s true, but she failed to mention the expansion’s theme would be death and suffering. So it goes.
Soon, I’ll pen words to 2033-me and probably seal and send them to my friend for safekeeping. Lord-willing, I’ll be roundable to 50 when I read it, having weathered both further losses and further joys. Onward and upward, “on God’s adventure,” as I signed off the last.
What do you look forward to or hope to shake off about the future?
*This phrase was liberally applied in both my 2019 letter and in our home group when we recently discussed the New Testament book of James, Chapter 4.