Friends of Dave #443: 🍔 have you seen this clown? 🤡
Where do you want to be a year from now?
Friends, it’s official: for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is HERE.
Now I am fortunate to live less than a mile from the ocean, so during the warm months, that means there is plenty of opportunities for fun in the sun (and water).
When my wife and I work from home during the summer and the weather is right, we try to make it a habit, as often as we can, to grab some snacks and beverages after we close our laptops and head to our local beach (just the two of us) for a few hours in the evening before the sun sets.
We’ve found that it is a nice way for us to unwind and spend quality time with each other away from all of the real life stuff we have going on at any given time. We’ve also adopted a rule that phones are in silent mode and not visible while we are there to keep us present.
Nothing big. Nothing fancy. No agendas.
Just the two of us sitting on a beach with each other enjoying our time together. I have to say, it’s one of the things I like most about where I live.
As you can imagine, the beach time conversations range in topics. From catching up on family news, stuff with our kids (when you have 3 young adult kids and one teenager, there is no shortage of ground cover), our various career happenings, current events or just beach people watching, we pack a lot into our time on the sand.
We also use it as a way to check in on how are both doing in our lives.
Recently, a few beverages in to the discussion, I asked my wife the following question:
Where do you want to be a year from now?
Yeah, I know it was a fairly broad question, but I was hoping to gain more insight into where she currently saw her priorities regarding things like her:
Career Expansion
Health (physical, spiritual, mental, etc.)
Personal Growth
Aspirations for our family
Travel interests
After furrowing her brow and giving me a look that spouses give each other when they are trying see if an instigator is serious or just messing around, my wife took the bait and thought about it for a few moments.
Her responses both surprised and enlightened me. They were all good, but there were a few things she said that I wouldn’t have assumed were priorities had I not asked.
And then, of course, she turned the tables on me and asked me to reciprocate.
“None of your goddamn business,” I quickly replied, with a wry smile.
Of course, since I originally posed the question, I already sort of had an idea — I think she too was somewhat surprised with the order of priorities I shared in my reply.
It seems like a simple question, but how often do we stop and take the time to ask ourselves (let alone our partners or loved ones) to think about the future as if it was a blank canvas?
Sure a lot can happen in that span of time. There are no guarantees.
But I believe it’s good and healthy to articulate a strategic vision for what is important to us and in our lives. That way to we can start to develop a framework to make it happen. And when it comes to our partners, we can align on and help support that framework so they can accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish.
What do you think?
Do you know where you or the people closest to you want to be in their lives a year from now?
Do you know what the biggest priorities are?
More importantly, have you asked?
As we wrapped up the thread on this during our session at the beach and the sun inching ever closer to the horizon, my wife declared, “Okay, okay, now I have an really important question I would like to pose….”
“Forget where I want to be in a year….What are you planning to put on the grill for dinner tonight?”
We both laughed — enough postulating about the future.
The plan to satisfy the evening’s hunger was more pressing….
XOXO
Dave
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