“Imagine your perfect day”
Eight-year-old me had fun doing that.
When I was eight I watched the Disney move “The Sword in the Stone”, about King Arthur’s childhood and training from the wizard Merlin before pulling the titular sword from the stone and becoming king.
Despite being Disney-fied, it’s a decent retelling of the first book in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.
My favorite part in the movie was when Arthur, known as Wart when he was a child, was transformed by Merlyn into a bird and later into a fish.
After seeing the move, I day-dreamed of being able to fly like a bird. Not in a plane or using some mechanical means. To actually fly, using my body, as a bird.
My perfect day at the time would have been to be transformed into a bird, so I could fly through the trees, experiencing the joy of seeing the world from above, darting, flitting, hunting.
It was completely unrealistic. But that’s ok.
I actually entertained the dream as much as I did because I believed that I would one day die, and come back to life with the power to do whatever I wanted.
And I wanted to fly like a bird.
As I’ve grown older, my “perfect day” daydreams have come down to earth.
You see, I don’t have wizard to grant me all my dreams.
And my expectations about one day having the ability to turn into a bird are gone too.
The Pain and Joy of Growing Up
Growing, not just growing up, means watching your dreams change. Some will grow larger, especially if you’re getting closer to them.
Others will shrink and possibly die off.
As my dreams of flying died off, other dreams took their place. Dreams of dating, marriage, family. Dreams of a good job, a fulfilling career.
Everybody is striving for something more, something beyond what they have. Sometimes it’s as simple as a little more security. Other times, we want to radically change the world.
Growing always means letting reality modify our dreams a bit.
Wart, young Arthur, dreamed of flying, and actually got to experience it. But he had no idea at the time that he would one day be a King.
That dream was not even on his radar at the time.
There is no Merlyn
Merlyn wasn’t only able to turn Wart into a bird.
He also lived life backwards, which meant that he knew the future. He knew that Wart would one day be King Arthur.
But there is no Merlyn in our lives, not to grant our immediate daydreams, and not to tell us what we can and will become.
We have to face our future as the unknown that it is. Without magical powers.
Because of those two limitations, imagining an unrealistic perfect day is not a good idea.
First of all, if you cannot see a path from the reality of today to the imagination of your perfect day, it’s a fruitless exercise, more likely to cause frustration than excitement.
More importantly, even if you can see a path, it’s wrong.
You’re not Merlyn. There is no Merlyn.
The path you follow to any future perfect day will never be the one you imagine.
One day at a time
And so, better than imagining some future perfect day, imagine your perfect “today”.
With all your current limitations. With all your lack of knowledge. With every constraint that currently exists in your life.
Your perfect today isn’t going to have you in a new job, or a new relationship, or a new home, or a new body, or a new mindset.
It’s going to be a day you can live. But the best day you can live.
Where you live a life as good as you can possibly manage.
Where you take the future unknown and order it into a present that you can know.
Your Perfect Today
Your perfect today is maybe 1% better than yesterday.
You lift a little harder at the gym. You eat a little healthier. You work a little harder, or smarter. You spend a little extra time with your loved ones. Or you’re just a little more real with them.
It’s possible to get to the end of a day and think, “That was a perfect today”.
It’s also possible to use your perfect “today” ideal to critically examine your day and come up with adjustments for tomorrow.
Your Perfect Tomorrow
And it’s in the tomorrows that things get really interesting.
Getting 1% better every day means you’re over 3x as effective after just a year.
Properly approaching each day with a plan to make it as good as it can be will leave you feeling slightly happier each day.
But over the long term, it will have huge impacts.
It’s hard to overstate what is possible in the long term.
Remember, Wart became King Arthur.