Changing the Future

January 12, 2026

Greetings from the alternate,

It’s winter here. Where I live this is not some benign demarcation on a calendar; it is more like an ultimatum from the environment.  Outside these windows that line my desk, nature is wintering as if it has something to prove.  

In a little over four months, it will be Memorial Day weekend.  In my world, that matters; it means spring in its fullness, the leading edge of summer. I don’t think of it much in advance, especially surrounded by this frozen tableau, but I am aware of its presence in my future. Memorial Day weekend would be like this: milder temperatures, there would be cleaning up litter from winter, fallen branches, leaves from last autumn. We hang the flag from the porch.  There might be hamburgers cooked on the grill, the outside furniture dusted off and placed, tentatively, hopefully, on the deck.

There is nothing wrong with this vignette, but I am going to change the future. Not just for Memorial Day weekend but for all the weekends until then, and perhaps a few others.

Many of the choices I make, the plans I form, have some effect on the days ahead of me. Most are so subtle it’s hard to see how they matter.  Others become companions who keep me company through most of my day.

On Memorial Day weekend, I will run a marathon.  This is not an earth-shattering announcement; it is an almost routine adventure in any year from the last four decades. But this weekend, I recognized that making this choice matters in ways that have little to do with the race.

My son suggested the marathon, and perhaps I had been subconsciously waiting for it, it just fell into place.  I thought about it for a moment, maybe less, because it didn’t feel like thinking, and I said yes. So maybe it wasn’t so much of a choice as an instinct.

When I run, I change the future.  I create a new future for the older version of me. I am challenged physically, changed mentally and spiritually.  I am shown another door, and another, which can lead to a richer life.  What often happens in this new future is that I intersect with what is probably my best self.

The choice I made changed Memorial Day weekend. It will look and feel different, it will be nearly a completely new experience.  In the days between this one and that one, the weather will be winter. It will range from inconvenient to hostile, the world will fill with snow and ice and frigid temperatures meant to erase any thought about past or future. There will be days that I would rather not go out. But that future doesn’t exist for me any longer. 

What I know from experience, which I often push as hard as I can into forgetting, is that winter is not the enemy. Once I have gone through the little procrasti-dance and taken the first steps, the first teeth-aching breaths, the weather is almost irrelevant.  So too the effort, the reluctant muscles, the twinges and pings that otherwise might argue with me to stay on the couch. Once I’m in motion, those things become participants, not obstacles.

Because I am creating a new future for my 18-week older self.  It will also matter in most of the days between now and then.  It will shape my choices in countless ways.  I’m not announcing some dramatic thing; it is a small change in a full life.  But it reminds me that without this catalyst, a choice I made, that my future would be perhaps a little emptier.

I realize none of this is original thinking, that it is all obvious and simplistic and self-evident.

But all of us, maybe especially me, need to be reminded of the fundamental truths of life, maybe especially when we are examining ways to make the world better. A small choice can lead to a new action, one that benefits us and the people around us.

I don’t know the future with certainty, and I’ve learned that making plans doesn’t keep God from laughing. But in this moment, I can feel the months ahead change to something else. Not all easy, not all fun, but my choice.  Come Memorial Day weekend, I will be a little different person than I might have been.  By the time the weekend is over, I’ll be a little different again.

And, it’s likely in these days between, I will change winter from a season to be dreaded, to a partner.  The ice and snow and cold are not here to stop me, they are part of the choice, part of my new future.

Hope this finds you choosing your future,

David

Copyright © 2026 David Smith