Pinterest, Primates, And My Passion For Escaping the Present
Article and art by Emmaline Hawley
Two and a half weeks ago I sent my mom a TikTok video with the caption “the scenic route.” I had been sobbing on my floor over it for the past ten minutes. It was a series of monkey illustrations.
To rewind a bit, a couple of days prior, I had been complaining to my mom about my apartment’s state of cleanliness (or lack thereof), my disdain for CC’s bureaucratic email system, and most of all my desire to move on in life. To plant myself firmly in the future, into some ideal vision where I work for myself, live in a perfectly polished apartment, and travel regularly to Italy using my flawless linguistic skills picked up through only two beginner blocks. Sounds feasible, right? As I described this ideal “next chapter,” my mom reminded me that this was not the first time I’d envisioned a perfect future rather than worked to create a better present. I rolled my eyes at her clichéd use of “you need to live in the present,” because obviously I was, right? I mean, I hadn’t invented time travel yet, because surely if I had, I wouldn’t still be sleeping in a Twin XL. I think I responded with some quip about how she and my therapist would get along swimmingly and shrugged her comment off. It was block break after all; I had to get to living.
However, come Friday night, Anna-Laura’s monkey coming-of-age saga crept its way onto my For You Page, and prompted a breakdown of an impressive scale. The illustrations, done in a nostalgic style, depict a monkey from youth to retirement as they express their desire to jump to the next chapter in their life. By the end of the series, the monkey has changed their statements from “I can’t wait…” to a content “I think I’ll take the scenic route this time.” While the monkey’s words seem to convey anticipation for all the wonders that life holds, their expression betrays the deep sadness in this obsession. I often find myself hiding this same melancholy as I dream of my future. Yes, I can’t wait for the next stage of my life, but is it because I value change and growth, or because I can’t wait to escape my present?
This question has been on my mind recently as I prepped my final composition and presentation for my Intro to Italian class. The prompt, “describe your dream home,” had me in the trenches of my Pinterest boards as I searched for images I could describe only with my limited vocabulary. But while I scrolled one night, feverishly placing velvet couches, gallery walls, and iridescent tile onto a slide, I realized that I wasn’t invested in this activity because it brought me joy. Instead, after receiving the troubling news from CC that there would be limited housing next year, I poured all my efforts into building not just a home, but a lifestyle, a community, and a career…for ten years in the future. Did I look at nearby apartments for next year for longer than five minutes? No. Did I pull out my pen to practice tattooing for the studio I had planned to occupy the ground floor? No. Did I go downstairs to spend time with my friends who have been with me through seasons, good and bad? No. I doom-scrolled on Pinterest and convinced myself that this was a healthy practice of manifestation.
As I’ve reflected on my tendency to be like the cartoon monkey, I’ve come to three conclusions:
It isn’t a bad thing to plan the future, as long as you are actually excited about it and are taking steps in the present moment to create it.
It is far easier to plan out an ideal future for yourself years down the road than it is to visualize a better tomorrow.
There is so much good in the present moment beyond clichéd breathing techniques and walks outside.
Think back to when you were in elementary school. Did anyone ever ask you what you wanted to do when you were older? I wanted to be a farmer. While this dream was dashed when a Belgian horse snuck up behind me and tried to eat my ponytail during a field trip, I didn’t feel any dread in this planning of my future. It was driven by pure curiosity. Later, I decided that I wanted to be a famous paleontologist and dug up my school’s entire kickball field with roughly fifteen accomplices because I was genuinely excited to see what I could find. Unfortunately, I found myself face to face with a talking-to instead of a triceratops on this specific occasion, but my point still stands. Back in those days, while I was excited about my future, it came from a place of curiosity. An “I wonder…” rather than an “I can’t wait…” statement. I enjoyed my present moment and explored my passions whenever I could. Unlike my current self, I didn’t discount my present, but rather brought my excitement for what could be into my everyday life.
It was around seventh grade when this joyful approach to conceptualizing my future turned into an obsession. I remember staying up late at night to plan out my future dorm, major, and career. I should’ve been worrying about which headband to wear to our formal; I was thirteen! But when academic pressure, friend group breakups, and sports team anxieties waited for me at school the next day, this planning felt like an escape. I didn’t have to think about what Halley said to me on the field that day, because in five years I would have a new friend group who understood me, who decorated my dorm with me, who I worked with. Instead of returning to school the next day and having a conversation with her, I dealt with low self-esteem in my friendships for the rest of middle and high school. But in my perfect future, these problems didn’t exist. I don’t blame myself for coping the way I did, I was just a kid. But as I’ve gotten older, I am trying to look tomorrow in the face with greater confidence, knowing that the future can only provide respite for so long.
When I decided that my obsession with the future was getting problematic, I turned to Google to find helpful ways to live in the present. All that awaited me there was a series of guilt-tripping and demeaning articles claiming that a simple breath of gratitude or a walk outside with a smile plastered on my face would make the present more appealing than the future. Unfortunately, neither of those options have ever brought me much comfort. So instead, I propose that the present has so much to offer if one leans into their curiosity. I’ve found that asking my friends about their passions, my counselors about possibilities I can start working towards today, and myself about what actually brings me joy in this moment have been monumentally more helpful in creating a beautiful present. I can still dream about the future and plan it out practically, but I can also experience the full depth of what it is to be human right here, right now, by approaching each moment with excitement about what could be.