It can be an exciting thing, or a frightening thing, to realize that the things we’re doing regularly right now, if we keep doing them for the next few years, are things we’ll get to be very good at.
It can be reading and reflecting on philosophical texts. It’s astonishing how much a text changes over the course of a few years of practice. Something you read early on will make so much more sense when it’s read after half a decade of reading other philosophical texts.
It might be a language that we’ll be better at. It doesn’t matter how bad you think you are at languages. If you are constantly, repeatedly spending time studying one, it will eventually start making sense, and probably a lot sooner than you’d fear.
Maybe it’s exercise. Barring a serious injury, a couple years of running or lifting weights will change your body and soul, and will leave you considerably more capable than at the beginning.
Then again, it’s not only the good things we do that will grow within us.
Maybe being passive-aggressive is what we’ll be good at. Maybe it will be self-righteousness, or procrastination, that will become our expertise.
We have so much power over our future. Don’t think about the things that you’ll do this year, or by Christmas, or by next month. Think about today.
Make today the kind of day you can be proud of. Or at least make it one step closer to that kind of day.
Make that small change and hang onto it, and once it’s getting easy, make a second change. Don’t rush it. There’s no hurry. Make a small improvement and cling to it, and that’s more than enough.
Learn to change the day today, and you’ll simultaneously learn to change your entire life.
Do something you can be proud of today. And then do it again tomorrow.
Whatever we do day by day will be who we are, and what we’re great at, in just a few years. What will those things be?