“Move on, we’re not seventeen.”
– Slide Away, Miley Cyrus
About a month after leaving the best job I ever had, I met with probably the best boss I’ve ever had to discuss potential ways of coming back. One thing from that conversation has always stuck with me.
“You never make up your mind.”
To an extent, this is true. I’ve always been incredibly adaptable to my heart’s desires. Sometimes, those desires change with the wind.
I spent much of 2023 focused on establishing myself in the professional trail running scene, with plans to participate in Zegama and take the summer off to train in the mountains of Quebec or BC. But wouldn’t you know it? Plans evolve and change. Much of the reason for that dream stemmed from fighting my way back to where I wanted to be. A need for other avenues of living life was born out of not being able to live life the way I fully wanted. Now back in that happy place, it’s difficult to see myself fulfilling those old ideas.
This is completely okay.
Plans change. People change. Nothing ever stays the same.
Before moving on, I’m going to tell you that I think Miley Cyrus is either one of the best lyricists of the modern era; and/or has one of the best writing teams by her side.
Now I’m going to tell you that she’s found a formula for writing several songs that all envelope this ideology.
“No one stays the same.”
Slide Away speaks clearly to a relationship she once had with a surfer bro. She tells him to go back to the ocean, and she’ll go back to her city life. More imperatively, the line that gets me singing at full volume every time:
“Move on, we’re not seventeen. I’m not who I used to be.”
Equally valuable, she’s said the same train of thought in Younger Now.
“No one stays the same. You know what goes up, comes back around.”
More recently and most favourably to my eardrums in the beautiful ballad Used To Be Young:
“You say I used to be wild. I say I used to be young.”
It’s a beautiful, but haunting reality. Life evolves in unique ways. We’re never going to get back to the way things were back in time. You never stay the same. The people around you never stay the same.
Yet we all have such a difficult time living in the present. We’re constantly thinking about the past. We’re always hypothesizing about the future.
In my constant desires to create the life that I want for myself, I’ve always struggled with the idea of living in the present. I’m always thinking – “what’s next?”.
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Sometimes I wish I could live like the fish I see swimming to the top of the water at Mandarin (definitely not a paid ad). They forget what they’re doing after only a few seconds. Stop all confused. Swim back down. Stop again. Return to swimming to the top. They lose their attention span after just a short few seconds.
In other words, they’re constantly living in the present. While I don’t want the same level of confusion or intelligence; sometimes I wish I had the fortitude to forget about everything else around me and live this way – in a constant state of the now, and nothing else.
When something’s not aligned to your current vision for how that future can go, it’s important to make active steps to change it. But at the same time, you’re also never going to get back to where you are in the present moment.
There’s an old adage recreated in various ways, such as through a POV from Michael Scott in The Office. You never know you’re in the good old days until after it’s gone.
If you’re constantly thinking about the future, how can you give your best self in the present?
Importantly, you truly don’t know if your life will ever be better in the future than it is right now. So why not live in the present? Why not forgive yourself for not being where you want to be in the future? Why not start living to satisfy your needs in the present and remember the bigger picture at play, which is that your life will always evolve in unique ways completely different from the future you’re currently imagining.
If I look back on the past ten years…if I return to the days of being seventeen, my life has evolved in a way completely different from those intentions. I wanted to marry my best friend, coach at the highest level of club soccer in Canada, and have a published book.
Six years ago (and I know this because it’s still in the same notebook I use today), I wanted to take screenwriting at a film school.
I never thought I’d actually live out a childhood dream of being a professional athlete. I never thought I’d be flaunted around like some sort of prize by the very people I watched on TV in the soccer world. I never thought I’d develop a love for potatoes. I certainly never thought I’d enjoy cowgirl country music.
But life evolves in unique ways.
Life will evolve away from the ways that you envision your life playing out in the next five to ten years. It may (almost certainly will) look completely different from the future you imagine. So with that, I write this article as a reminder to myself to live in the present moment. To adopt the mindsets of Miley Cyrus and her writing team. To recognize this reality:
- People change, including you. I’m not who I used to be. Others aren’t who they used to be.
- With that, move on from the past. The past is in the past. It isn’t meant to last. Meanwhile, stop worrying so much about the future. The future will never fully resemble the one you imagine.
Live in the present. Allow for life to evolve in unique ways, away from initial intentions. Be grateful for the way that life evolves. And move on. You’re not seventeen.
Thanks for reading and see you soon.
Rhys Desmond 