MIDNIGHT REFLECTION: I Miss When the Future Felt Far Away

Dr. Carmela Maxell: Yeah. It's late and I've been thinking about the future, which is probably the worst possible thing to think about this late at night. Because nothing productive has ever happened after midnight when somebody starts a sentence with what if what if this happens? What if that changes? What if I lose this? What if I can't afford that? What if my children have to navigate something I never had to navigate? What if everything we've been assuming would remain relatively stable doesn't? And tonight I realized something. I miss when the future felt far away. I miss when tomorrow felt like this distant place that I could casually make plans for. Next year, five years from now. ten years from now retirement my children's futures the things I still want to build the places I still want to go the person I still want to become There was something comforting about assuming there would always be enough distance between me and the future to figure it out. But lately the future feels really fucking close. And I don't mean that in some inspirational seize the day because tomorrow isn't promised kind of way. I mean that sometimes it feels like tomorrow was standing in the doorway saying we need to talk. And I don't think I'm the only person who feels this. I talk to people every day who are tired. Not sleepy. Not I stayed up too late watching Netflix tired. I'm talking about deeper exhaustion. The exhaustion that comes from constantly calculating. Calculating money. Calculating risk. Calculating whether your job is secure. Calculating what your children are being exposed to. Calculating whether you can afford groceries and rent and childcare and health care and the thing that broke on your car that absolutely could not have chosen a worse fucking month to break. Calculating how much longer you can keep doing everything you're doing at the pace you're doing it. And somehow. We're supposed to call this normal. Have you been to the grocery store lately? You walk in for three things and somehow leave wondering whether you've accidentally purchased controlling interest in the company. You look at the receipt like, excuse me? I bought chicken and toothpaste. Why does this require financing? And we laugh. Because sometimes humor is the only socially acceptable way to say, I'm scared. I'm scared that everything costs more. I'm scared that the numbers aren't numbering anymore. I'm scared that people who did everything they were supposedly supposed to do are still struggling. People work, people have degrees, people have careers, people budget, people plan, people pick up additional jobs, people postpone things, people cut things, and they're still looking at their bank accounts, wondering, how the hell am I supposed to keep doing this? And underneath financial uncertainty is something even bigger. Safety. Because money has never just been about money. Money is housing. Money is food. Money is transportation. Money is medicine. Money is childcare. Money is whether you can leave something or someone that's hurting you. Money is whether an emergency becomes an inconvenience or a catastrophe. So when people say they're worried about the cost of living, sometimes what they're really saying is I'm worried about how close I am to not being okay. And I think a lot of us are living closer to that line than we admit. Then there's work. I remember a time when having a job felt like having a job. Now people can walk into work on Monday and whether wonder whether some restructuring, funding decision, algorithm, acquisition, budget cut, or executive they've never met is going to completely change their life by Friday. And there's a psychological cost to living like that, because human beings can tolerate difficulty. We're actually remarkably good at that. What we're not particularly good at is indefinite uncertainty. It's hard to settle into a life when some part of you is constantly waiting for the terms of that life to change. And I see that uncertainty showing up everywhere, including mental health. People are going to therapy. They're learning the language. They're setting boundaries. They're talking about trauma. They're identifying triggers. They're taking medication when medication is appropriate. They're journaling, they're meditating, they're listening to podcasts like this one. They're doing the damn work. And yet so many people still feel like they can't cope. And I think sometimes we make that an individual failure. Why am I still anxious? Why am I still overwhelmed? Why isn't therapy fixing this? Why do I know all of the coping skills and still feel like I'm drowning? But I've been thinking about something. What if some of our distress isn't evidence that we're failing to cope? What if we're responding like human beings to environments that are genuinely difficult to live inside? Therapy can help you regulate your nervous system. It cannot make your rent cheaper. A breathing exercise can help interrupt panic. It cannot guarantee your job. Mindfulness can bring you into the present moment. It cannot control what happens tomorrow. Boundaries can protect your emotional energy. They cannot make the entire world predictable. And that doesn't mean those things don't matter. They matter enormously. But I think we have to be careful about turning mental health into another way to blame people for struggling. Because sometimes a person isn't struggling because they haven't learned enough coping skills. Sometimes life is just a lot. And then there are things our children are navigating. This is where I think about how much the world has changed within one generation. When I was growing up, if somebody was bullying me, I generally knew who the hell they were. There was a face. There was a name. There was a hallway. There was a lunchroom. There was a school bus. There was a person I could point to and say, that motherfucker right there. And depending on the decade and where you grew up, perhaps there was also a very direct conflict resolution strategy available behind the school. I'm not recommending that. I'm simply reporting historical practices. But today, the thing hurting a child may not even be human. Think about that. A kid can be sitting completely alone in their bedroom and still be surrounded by thousands of voices. An algorithm can decide what insecurity to show them repeatedly. A fake account can humiliate them. A manipulated image can travel farther than they ever will. A rumor doesn't stop when the school bell rings. Something cruel can follow them home, into their bedroom, onto the device sitting six inches from their face. And increasingly, they may not even know whether the person speaking to them is a person. That's terrifying to me. Because how do you teach a child to confront something that doesn't have a face? How do you tell them to ignore the bully when the bully can generate another username? How do you tell them not to compare themselves when an algorithm has spent months learning exactly which comparison will keep them looking? How do you teach them what is real when technology is becoming increasingly capable of manufacturing something that looks real? We are raising human nervous systems inside environments that human nervous systems were never designed to navigate. And then we wonder why everyone is overwhelmed. And there's another thing that scares me. Access. The things people can get their hands on now. The substances, the potency, the combinations. The fact that something can be sold as one thing and contains something entirely different. The fact that young people can access things in ways that would have been unimaginable when many of us were their age. There was a time when parents worried about what their children might encounter at a party. Now, sometimes the party is in their pocket. The dealer can be in their phone. The influence can be in their bedroom. The danger can arrive in packaging that looks harmless. And again, How do you protect somebody from something you cannot always see? That's the question I keep coming back to. How do we feel safe when so many of the threats we're afraid of don't have faces anymore? An algorithm doesn't have a face. Economic instability doesn't have a face. A layoff email barely has a face. A counterfeit substance doesn't announce itself. A manipulated image doesn't tell you it's lying. An anonymous account doesn't have to look you in the eye. And uncertainty itself certainly doesn't have a face. There is nobody to confront, nobody to argue with. Nobody you can point at and say, you, you're the problem. Instead, we're surrounded by these enormous invisible systems, and we're trying to build ordinary human lives inside of them. We're trying to fall in love, raise children, write books, go to work, pay bills, make dinner, remember birthdays, plan vacations, heal from childhood, drink enough water, answer text messages, exercise, call our parents, schedule the dental appointment. And apparently get eight hours of sleep. Sure. Absolutely. I'll squeeze that in between the existential dread and the laundry. And sometimes I think that's why I miss when the future felt far away. Because I remember believing that adults knew what was happening. Do you remember that? When you were little? Adults seemed so adult. They drove cars. They wrote checks. They knew where the band-aids were. They knew when the weather was going to be bad. They seemed like they understood the rules. And then you become an adult and realize, nobody knows what the fuck is happening. We're all reading the same headlines. We're all looking at the same prices. We're all watching technology move faster than our ability to develop rules around it. We're all trying to make decisions with incomplete information. We're all trying to protect people we love from things we cannot completely control. And maybe that's the part that hurts the most. Because when you love somebody, especially when you love your children, there's this primitive part of you that wants to make a promise. I will keep you safe. It's almost instinctive. You look at this little person and think, nothing is going to happen to you. Not while I'm here. And then life teaches you something devastating. You don't actually have the authority to make that promise. No parent does. You can protect, you can prepare, you can educate, you can pay attention. You can create a home where your children can tell you the truth. You can notice changes. You can ask uncomfortable questions. You can show up. You can love them ferociously. But you cannot control every person they meet, every substance they encounter, every image they see, every message they receive, every decision they make, every system they have to navigate, every version of the future they will eventually inherit. And there are nights when that realization scares the absolute shit out of me. Because I want certainty. I want someone to tell me your children will be okay. You will be okay. The people you love will be okay. The future you're building toward would still be there when you arrive. And nobody can promise me that. Nobody can promise you that either. And maybe that's why uncertainty can become so consuming. Because the mind hates an unfinished sentence. So it finishes it. Usually badly. What if? And suddenly we're rehearsing tragedies that haven't happened. We're grieving futures that haven't been lost. We're experiencing disasters that exist only in our imaginations. We're trying to emotionally prepare ourselves for every possible outcome because some part of us believes if I worry about it enough, maybe it won't surprise me. But fear doesn't work. Way. Fear does not make the future more predictable. It just makes us live there early. And I don't want to live there early. I don't. I want to be informed. I want to pay attention. I want to prepare where preparation makes sense. I want to protect the people I love. I don't want to stick my head in the sand and pretend everything is wonderful when it isn't. But I also don't want everything that could happen to take possession of everything that is happening. Because something is happening right now, too. My children are growing right now. There are people I love who are still here right now. There are conversations I haven't had yet, books I haven't finished, episodes I haven't recorded, places I haven't visited. Meals I haven't tasted, people I haven't met, jokes I haven't laughed at, mornings I haven't woken up to, and if I spend all of today emotionally living inside the worst version of tomorrow, then fear has taken something from me before anything has even happened. Maybe courage isn't believing that nothing bad will happen, because that's not courage, that's certainty. And certainty is a luxury life rarely gives us. Maybe courage is knowing that we cannot control everything that comes next, and choosing to remain present anyway. Maybe it's checking the doors and then allowing yourself to sleep. Maybe it's checking your bank account, making the decisions you make, and then eating dinner without mentally calculating your entire financial future between bites. Maybe it's talking to your children about the world without teaching them that the world is only something to fear. Maybe it's using the coping skills even when they don't solve the larger problem. Maybe it's going to therapy even though therapy cannot fix society. Maybe it's letting yourself laugh while things are uncertain. Maybe it's making plans even though plans can change. Maybe it's buying the concert ticket. Starting the book, applying for the job, taking the picture, calling somebody, falling in love, resting, creating, living. Not because the future is guaranteed, but because this moment is already here. And tonight I think that's what I'm trying to remind myself. I miss when the future felt far away. I really do. I miss the innocence of believing that tomorrow was something I could deal with tomorrow. But maybe I don't need to recover that innocence. Maybe I need something else. Discernment. The ability to know the difference between preparation and fear. Preparation asks, what can I reasonably do? Fear asks, but what if it isn't enough? And fear will keep asking that question forever. There will never be enough information, enough money, enough locks, enough plans, enough vigilance, enough scrolling, enough checking, enough worrying to purchase certainty. So tonight, I'm not even gonna try. I'm going to pay attention to what deserves my attention. I'm going to prepare for what I reasonably can. I'm going to speak when something needs to be said. I'm going to protect the people I love in the ways actually available to me. And then I'm going to come back here. To this room, to this night, to this breath, to the people who are here now. Because the future will arrive soon enough. I don't have to drag it into tonight. And maybe you're listening because you've been feeling it too. Maybe you haven't even known how to explain it. You just know that lately you don't feel as safe as you used to. Financially, emotionally, professionally, socially. Maybe you're worried about your children. Maybe you're worried about yourself. Maybe you're doing everything you're supposed to and still wondering why you don't feel okay. I can't promise you that everything is going to be okay. And I don't think you came here for me to lie to you. But I can tell you this. You are allowed to care about what's happening without carrying every possible future at once. You are allowed to prepare without living in panic. You are allowed to acknowledge that some things really are frightening and still experience joy. You are allowed to turn off the phone. You are allowed to stop reading. You are allowed to laugh and make plans and imagine something good. And you are allowed to live in the world that exists tonight instead of every frightening world your mind is capable of creating for tomorrow. So tonight, here has to be enough. The people I love are here. I'm here. You're here. And tomorrow? Tomorrow can meet us when it gets here. This has been a midnight reflection from Rooted in Rising with Dr. Carmela Maxwell. Until next time, my friends, stay rooted in who you are and keep rising into who you're becoming. And please, get some sleep. The future can wait until the morning. And before you go, if something in tonight's reflection stayed with you, I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a comment. Tell me what you've been carrying lately. Tell me what uncertainty has looked like in your life. Or even just tell me that you were here listening tonight. And if Rooted in Rising has become a space that feels meaningful to you, make sure you follow or subscribe wherever you're listening. Like the episode, share it with somebody who might need it. And leave a rating or review if your platform allows it. Those little things help more people find these conversations and they help this community keep growing. Thank you for spending these few quiet moments with me tonight. Take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you soon. Good night, my friends.