I can’t picture my future. Not in the way I used to. I can think about tomorrow. Next week. The things I need to accomplish this month.
But ask me where I see myself five years from now and something strange happens. There is no picture.
For someone who loves being alive as much as I do, this initially frightened me. Because I don’t feel hopeless. I don’t feel like there isn’t a future. I very much want one. I just can’t see it.
I’ve started to wonder if maybe those are two very different things. Maybe the future hasn’t disappeared. Maybe I am trying to imagine it using categories that no longer fit me.
For most of my life, imagining the future was relatively easy. There were recognizable pieces. The next job. The next promotion. More money. A relationship. Marriage. Children. A home. Travel. Accomplishments.
You could arrange those things in your mind, put them on a vision board, attach a timeline to them and call the picture my future. I did.
There was comfort in believing I knew where I was going. Then life interrupted the plan.
When the Old Blueprint Stops Working
Cancer does something peculiar to your relationship with the future. Before my diagnosis, the future felt almost contractual. Of course I knew intellectually that nothing was guaranteed. We all do.
But knowing something intellectually and having it arrive in your body are entirely different experiences.
At 38, I was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. Suddenly the future wasn’t an abstract concept anymore. It was something discussed in doctor’s offices. Something measured through scans and pathology and treatment plans.
My future was something I desperately wanted more of. Perhaps one of the lasting effects of facing mortality is that I can no longer pretend certainty exists where it doesn’t.
I know now how quickly a life can divide itself into before and after. I know you can have plans for October and receive completely different ones. I know the life you are building can disappear without asking whether you are ready to release it.
But I also know something else. I survived the life I didn’t plan for.
And the woman who came out the other side isn’t particularly interested in recreating the exact life she imagined before everything changed.
That’s where things get complicated. Because what happens when you release the old blueprint…but don’t have the new one yet?
The Space Between Lives
There are periods when the external structures we use to orient ourselves begin changing at the same time.
Work changes.
Relationships change.
Communities change.
Priorities change.
Your understanding of yourself changes.
Things you once chased stop feeling important.
Rooms you thought you wanted to belong in don’t feel like yours once you arrive.
Versions of success that once motivated you no longer have the same hold.
And yet the things that do feel true may still be taking shape.
That’s where I find myself.
There are things I know:
I want to write.
I want to use my voice.
I want to help people.
I want meaningful work.
I want financial security.
I want to experience love in all it’s forms..
I want beautiful experiences.
I want to keep building Lighthouse.
I want my life to feel like mine.
But knowing the ingredients isn’t the same thing as seeing the finished picture.
I don’t know exactly what company I’ll work for next.
I don’t know what Lighthouse ultimately becomes.
I don’t know which opportunities will grow into something significant and which ones are simply stepping stones.
I don’t know who I will marry.
I don’t know exactly where I’ll live.
I don’t know what my life will look like in 2030.
And when I ask my mind to show me the picture, sometimes there is simply…nothing.
But perhaps nothing is the wrong word. There is missing information.
Your Behavior May Know Before Your Imagination Does
This is what I’ve started paying attention to. Even though I can’t see my future clearly, I am constantly behaving as though I have one.
I am writing another book.
I am building something.
I am applying for opportunities.
I am meeting people.
I am saying yes to conversations that interest me.
I am speaking.
I am learning.
I am creating.
I am taking care of my body.
I am making decisions based on the woman I am becoming.
Those are not the behaviors of someone who has stopped believing in her future.
They are deeply future-oriented behaviors.
And that realization shifted something for me.
Maybe I don’t need to see the future to be moving toward it.
Maybe my imagination simply hasn’t caught up with my becoming.
Certainty Is Not the Same as Trust
I used to think trusting life meant believing everything would work out exactly as I envisioned.
I’m beginning to think that’s certainty disguised as trust.
Trust might actually be something much harder.
Continuing without knowing.
Participating without guarantees.
Taking the next step without requiring life to show you the entire staircase.
Planting something when you don’t know exactly what it will become.
Allowing yourself to want things without demanding to know precisely how or when they will arrive.
Maybe trust sounds less like: I know where I’m going.
And more like:I trust myself to meet whatever comes next.
That is a very different relationship with the future.
How Much Future Do We Actually Need?
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the life ahead of me. Maybe I don’t need to be able to close my eyes and see five years from now. Maybe I only need enough future for today.
Right now, that might be:
I want work that supports me financially and leaves room for the person I’ve become.
I want to keep writing.
I want to continue building something meaningful.
I want to meet good people.
I want to be open to love.
I want enough money to feel secure.
I want to take care of my body.
I want to laugh.
I want to travel.
I want to remain curious.
I want to enjoy being alive while the rest reveals itself.
That’s a future.
Maybe the Blank Space Is Sacred
There is another possibility I’ve been considering. Maybe I can’t see the new picture because I am finally refusing to manufacture one simply to make uncertainty more comfortable.
For so much of our lives, we are encouraged to know.
Where are you going?
What’s next?
What’s the plan?
Where do you see yourself in five years?
We celebrate clarity. We make uncertainty something to solve.
But there are seasons when forcing an answer means reaching backward and rebuilding with materials from a life we’ve already outgrown.
Maybe there is wisdom in allowing the page to remain blank for a while.
Sometimes we have to discover what we no longer want before we can recognize what we do.
Sometimes the old identity has to loosen before the new one can emerge.
Sometimes the old life has to become unbelievable before the next one becomes imaginable.
And maybe that’s where I am.
Not lost.
Not without hope.
Not without a future.
Between pictures.
There is the life I thought I would have.
There is the life I have already lived.
And somewhere ahead is a life I don’t yet have enough information to imagine.
For once, I don’t want to rush to fill in the blanks.
I want to participate.
I want to follow what feels true.
I want to keep building, writing, loving, working, creating, choosing and becoming.
I want to leave enough space for life to surprise me.
Cancer taught me that life can change in ways we never asked for.
But surviving it taught me something equally important: I can change, too.
So perhaps I don’t need a perfect picture of the future anymore.
Perhaps I only need to know that I want to be here for it.
And trust that when I arrive, I will know what to do with whatever comes next.
The blank space isn’t absence.
It’s unwritten.
