When the Future Feels Uncertain

I suppose the title of this post could be “when the future feels more uncertain than it usually does”, but my editor tells me that’s too many words. 

The uncomfortable truth is that the future is always uncertain. Our human brains evolved to spot patterns (even when they don’t exist) and we as a species developed a bad habit of projecting those patterns into the future and acting accordingly, but the only thing any of us knows for sure is that someday our time on this planet will be up. Everything else is just a guess. 

But there are times when the future feels extra uncertain, aren’t there? And right now sure feels like one of those times, with David Suzuki giving up on waiting for governments and institutions to take meaningful action on climate change as just one example of the kind of existential crisis we humans have created for ourselves.  

And yet, more than one thing can be true at the same time. 

We can be delighted to welcome our first grandchild into the world, and fascism is here (again!). 

We can nurture (inexpertly, on my part) gardens of native plants in our back yards and relationships with our neighbours, and persistent neo-liberal economics continue to transfer ever-increasing wealth from the poor to the rich as they’ve done for the last 40 years and seem intent on doing for the next 40. 

We can feel good about being able to retire and feel the chokehold as surveillance capitalism tightens its grip. 

Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night to contemplate my life it’s hard to justify worrying about whether I should contribute to an RRSP this year or not. 

I know that many of you feel the same way, because we’ve talked about it recently. Although everyone poses the question in slightly different ways, it boils down to this: How do we make financial decisions when we’re not totally sure what tomorrow is going to look like? Or if there’s even going to be a tomorrow?

I don’t have an easy answer for you. Frankly, If the worst future we can imagine is going to happen, I don't think that there's any amount of financial planning or individual risk management that will actually protect our ability to live today’s lifestyle 30 years from now. 

But all of the hopeful and not-so-hopeful conversations I’ve had over the past few years have gone something like this: 

We have to believe there’s a future. That’s how humans work.

We have to put the effort into creating the best version of the future we can imagine. That’s the only way to have a future.

And how we invest our time, money, emotional, physical, and mental resources right now matters right now. 

Choices that will only pay off if everyone fights to maintain the status quo? Not so much.