The Five Year Rule

Apparently Ted Mosby can be in things other
than How I Met Your Mother

I was thinking about the future, as is the plight of a college senior, when I remembered a movie I watched on my first(?) date with the old ball and chain. One of my favorite quotes from Happythankyoumoreplease, a movie with Ted Mosby as a writer instead of an architect, is that five years from now you'll look back and think what an asshole you were five years ago.

Penn&Teller, pointing out assholery
since the dawn of time

There's a lot of truth to this quote, because I've never thought of myself as asshole in the present but whenever I think back to who I used to be... well, I cringe. It's not that I'm a terrible person from day to day, it's just that as I mature I tend to look back on what I did with my "I'm so smart now" glasses. This got me to thinking though, if I'm only an asshole from the perspective of future (actually, present looking at past) me, then what does that imply about my choices? I like that to think that it means I do the best I can in the present, and just accept that I might think it was stupid when I reach the future.

Apparently this is a misquote,
but I prefer this to the real one

What I take away from this is that every single stupid (or not so stupid) decision we make now is what will define us in the future. Every single mistake we make adds up in immeasurably tiny ways to contribute to the person that you will become, even if you are happy with the person you are now. Now, before all one of my readers tells me that I should quit the pseudo-philosophy-- I know that this post is quite silly, and that it will look even dumber in five years' time. But, and this is a big but, this is the post I need to make at this point in my life-- it's the right choice now, even if I might make fun of it later. Time is a funny thing, for one thing we it is almost impossible to define the present. Most importantly to me though, is the fact that time completely changes my perspective on almost everything. What was intensely painful yesterday might be the transformative moment of my life when viewed from the future.

An overly idealistic
but thought-provoking view on fathers

Largely, I suppose that it's impossible to tell where you will be in five years but now I try to use that point of view as my guide for choices. How will I view this decision five years from now? Well I'll probably think I was an asshole, but at least I can admit that.