Investing in an Unpredictable Future
Reflections on My Anniversary and Lucy Dacus' "Best Guess" as a Reminder to Pursue Connection Amidst Uncertainty
This is the sixth installment of my weekly series of Friday music shares. I’m sharing it on Saturday because that’s how this week turned out…
Today is my anniversary! Six years ago, my spouse and I and a small number of loved ones gathered in a gorgeous chamber in Cambridge City Hall (where the first legal same-sex marriages in our country were performed at midnight on May 17, 2004) and we were wed. When we decided to get married, we did so with explicit shared understanding that a marriage isn’t a forever commitment - bucking the traditional “til death do us part” approach. We didn’t know what the future held for us as individuals and as a couple, and we didn’t want marriage to ever be a thing we were trapped in just because we’d said so in 2019. And we loved each other deeply and knew that the other was what we wanted out of whatever futures we could imagine for ourselves at that point in our lives. (We also wanted the benefits and protections of legal recognition of our relationship.) I smile writing this, because I remember that as we were quickly falling for each other at the beginning of dating not terribly long before we got hitched, we started to make plans for months off, but would always include the disclaimer “if the bloom doesn’t fall from the rose.” This quickly became tongue-in-cheek as we got to know each other better and neither of us had any expectation of the bloom falling from the rose. And it hasn’t yet and I don’t expect it to in any foreseeable future.
But the idea of a foreseeable future feels like a painful joke right now. Even looking back, we had no idea on March 29, 2019 that a year from then we would be in COVID lockdown with colleagues on ventilators. Our idea of what our relationship would look like and mean for us was thrown on its head by a terrifying pandemic and months spent with two cats and two humans in a small 2-bedroom apartment.
And now - this world. A way of American government that most of us took for granted is revealing its fragility and crumbling.1 As outspoken trans and queer people, we don’t know how long it will be safe to live in this country. We don’t know what the economy will do to our savings and the cost of living. We don’t know what will be asked of us in the coming months and years. It is unprecedented, and even the deep knowledge of history and other countries cannot give us a definitive roadmap for what lies ahead.
Yesterday, Lucy Dacus released a new album Forever is a Feeling. The lead single, “Best Guess” came out in February and is a beautiful homage to investing in an unknown future. While she’s most explicitly talking about a romantic relationship, there’s a lot here that can be applied to how we generally decide to invest our time, money, energy, emotions, and brain power in times like these.
I love your body
I love your mind
They will change
So will mine
But you are my best guess at the future
I joked to friends that this song makes me want to make a photo montage of my partner and cats set to this song and watch it on repeat. But as I listened more, I actually started imagining a montage of photos of all the people in my life - of the people who come out to the trans- and queer-centered coffee rides that I organize, of the friends and mentors and family spread around the world, of our neighbors, of the shop owners downtown who always greet me, of the organizers who supply community events with masks and air purifiers, of the neighborhood cats and dogs - I could go on. It brings tears to my eyes to think of this. Because my connection with and to all of these creatures really is my best guess at what will save us and make our lives worthwhile in an unknown future - even a pretty bad one should that come to pass despite our resistances.
Lucy Dacus also sings “If I were a gambling man and I am, you’d be my best bet.” Sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, what I’m doing when I build relationships and connections is betting on them being worthwhile parts of my future.
Next week, I’m doing a virtual workshop through Kentucky Health Justice’s trans health project on confronting isolation by building community. As I’ve alluded to in a lot of my writing and trainings, being meaningfully connected to others is critical to surviving and thriving under oppression. (I am of course not the first or only person to say this.) As I’m preparing that workshop I have been reflecting on what we ask of people when we encourage them to build meaningful relationships. The time spent, the emotion regulation and distress tolerance, the skills learning. In a world where extreme events—like a PhD student being indefinitely detained by ICE after the State Department unjustly cancels their visa without warning or sudden wildfires and floods destroy hundreds of homes in a matter of hours—are becoming increasingly common, it’s hard to know what will become of the communities we work so hard to build. Who will be able to stay? Who will be okay enough to show up when we need them? What will others in community need from us? Will we even be here or be connected to the community in the future? Will we splinter over some unforeseen conflict when tensions are high and emotional reserves low? Will we be enough?
High investment, uncertain yield. And yet, our relationships to others really are our best bet.
(I should note here that relationships and community are not purely pragmatic and if viewed only through the self-focused lens of future utility to an individual, they will be flat. Other motivations for creating and maintaining relationships are tied to values and what we can bring to others, as well as in-the-moment pleasure and other positive feelings.)
I also think there’s something incredibly beautiful about saying “I don’t know how things are going to turn out and that’s scary as hell, but instead of giving into that fear and avoiding planning for a future at all, I’m investing in what I believe will be important and what I hope the world will be.” This is what I see in the person with cancer who is tending their garden when they can’t know if they’ll be well enough for the harvest. And in the queer families (and all families) bringing children into this world. And everyone starting their next round of IVF unsure of what will come of it. And my friends planting fruit trees that won’t produce for years even as they have conversations about whether to move. And it’s what I see when we all gather, as well.
Fuck nihilism. Get in friends, we’re investing in our best guesses at the future.
One more thing about this song: The official music video. It is such a joyful celebration of butchness, of the sexiness of queerness, and of the fun we can all have together. Enjoy!
Okay last thing - I’m turning on paid subscriptions. I’m trying to devote more time to writing and to developing trainings, and some fine readers have pledged to support that work via paid subs. As of now I have no plans on making any content for paid subscribers only, so you don’t need to have a paid subscription to access this and all you gain by paying is knowing you’re supporting me devoting time to these shares and other unpaid endeavors.
There’s a lot I could say here on how we’ve mythologized the American structure of government and the limits of harm from political leaders, and who has been in the position to imagine the government was ultimately invested in their wellbeing up to now and who has not. But I think that’s 1) a little outside of what I feel knowledgeable enough to write meaningfully about and 2) a bit of a moot point for this post, when so many of us really are feeling shaken by blatantly non-democratic happenings, and regardless of what we’ve hitherto believed about our democracy, we are facing a particularly uncertain political future.