The Future is Still Fake

Yesterday I took a walk with a friend who is also a new(er) mom and we talked about baby sleep, as one does when living with a baby and not sleeping. And she was reminding me about all the (shit) things people say to new parents, and about my journey with my own baby’s sleep.

Baby sleep is a metaphor and metonym for everything about parenting, and lots of things about life. It’s like an indicator species in terms of culture. What kind of culture we live in, what it says (yells) about how we should do things, etc.

And what I mean by baby sleep in this instance is how we relate to the future.

The thing I want to yell about here is one idea that gets expressed in (sleep training) culture that causes so much suffering. (I promise I’m not here to tell you to sleep train or not sleep train, if you have a baby. I’m just here to use this idea that gets passed around in sleep training zones as a way to notice and alleviate some of our suffering.)

This is the idea (myth): that you have once chance to get it right.

That if you are not completely consistent in how you handle nights with your baby, they will “never” learn. Their sleep will be horrible forever, and it will be your fault.

This thought that I took as a belief caused me so, so much pain, for so long. It caused my child so much pain! It caused my relationship with my partner so much pain! And it shows up in so many other places.

Future fear. One chance culture, which is so closely tied to piety, and deservingness. Like if you figure out the right way to do this, your baby will sleep perfectly forever. And you will get the sleep you “deserve.”

My experience of life is that this is not how life works. There is not one chance, and in fact, if we are very lucky and we live a long time alongside our children, there are so very many chances. By chances I mean nights, so very many nights to be with our children and make new decisions, try new things, make changes, try again. And each chance, each night, in fact is quite different. If we are paying attention, the conditions are always changing. So even if we “get it right” one night, the conditions of the next night will be completely different, and whatever we did that “worked” might not work anymore. This is not something to lament, it is actually the magic dance of parenting, aka the dynamic activity of LIVING, which we complain about because we have built a culture around ourselves in which we are constantly deluded that we have much more control than we really do, and so when a baby comes along (or doesn’t, everyone with fertility struggles knows way too painfully), we are confronted with the reality that has always been the case, but we didn’t have to (get to?) see before.

We get lots of chances to shift and heal and change. This is my experience of the reality of life, and of parenting. I’m aware of this in a beautiful way right now as I see my mom make changes in her life that contribute to our relationship deepening, and I think, wow, it’s never too late. There’s never one chance.

Kaitlin Klimmer was the first person who made this truth explicit for me in the realm of baby sleep. The one idea that I desperately needed, came from her: if you try to make a change, and you get too stressed, just stop for the night and try again the next night.

Literally that’s it. That’s the idea that changed my life. Try something new, and if it doesn’t work, try it again next time. Looking at it now, it seems absurd that I wouldn’t know that. It feels like the most obvious thing ever.

I had been employing this idea in many other facets of my life, and in fact most of my work with others is based on this idea, (hahahahah!) but not with my baby and his sleep.

(For people who are actually struggling with how to respond to their babies and sleep, Kaitlin Klimmer’s work on this is the resource I recommend after having researched so so many. She normalizes infant sleep and supports parents in making changes, in a way that aligns with reality to me - see above truth. Email me if you’re a parent in the throws of the intensity of sleep deprivation and want to hear more of my thoughts on the actual topic, or just google her.)

BUT! I want to get back to my point, which is not, in fact, about baby sleep. My point is about our minds. This is the point I am interested in, always.

When we think we have one chance at something, our nervous systems rev up. We sweat. We vibrate anxiety. We are not relaxed. We are not loving. We are brimming with performance anxiety. This is the opposite of the conditions we need to thrive, and to “succeed” at anything. This is the opposite of what we need when we are trying to support our child in learning a new thing, or making a change.

What we need when we are learning is space and trust. What our child needs when they are learning is space and trust. They need us to know that we have space, and they have space, and everyone has lots of chances to try, because chances are not interruptions to learning, CHANCES ARE ACTUAL LEARNING.

(Wow accessing space and trust when one is sleep deprived is among the harder things to do, I have found. Still, this does not change the need for these qualities / practices for any learning process.)

It’s a magic paradox. When we feel truly at peace with any outcome, the outcome we want has more space to occur.

So noticing when we get stressed when we’re trying to make changes with our babies, or ourselves, or our partner, and taking a break and trying again later, is not an interruption to success but in fact the only path to it. And in fact, taking a break to try again next time is a way of succeeding in the moment, responding in truth to the moment.

The thing I was yelling to my new mom friend was really this: THE FUTURE IS FAKE. Ways of relating to your baby (or your partner, or yourself, or strangers) that are based on a fearful story of the future, will just stress everyone out and make you miss the beautiful, magic, very brief time in which find yourself, whatever people and experiences happen to be included.

I’ve yelled about the future being fake on here before (a favorite topic of mine), and about baby sleep. This one merits repeating, because remembering that the future is fake is the difference between living a joyful life and a totally stressed out life. Like really, really.

So where does your mind tell you a story about the future that causes you to miss the beauty of this moment in this actual life you are living right now?

It might be a fear story about how your baby will sleep whatever way they are (not) sleeping right now, forever. It might be that your awful job will keep being your awful job, forever. It might be that fighting with your partner will keep being all you do, forever. I can guarantee that whatever your story of the future is, it will not keep being whatever way it is right now, forever. (Impermanence.) And the point is not even to get caught up in what the future might be or will not be - the point is to notice what thoughts about the future are taking place because those thoughts influence your happiness right now so damn much. Most of the time we don’t even know what thoughts are happening. We don’t even know they are JUST THOUGHTS, they are not in fact, the actual future!

This noticing is the job if we’re invested in not missing this life. To notice the thoughts that lead to the suffering. Noticing is alchemical. Noticing changes everything. (Noticing can also be called mindfulness, which is why everyone is obsessed with it, because it changes everything.)

When I think about what I would have wanted to do differently as a parent in those early months, this is it. I would want to not miss out on the magic present because of my Future Fear Thoughts. Which is why I’m yelling this to you right now. Perhaps there’s a moment you’re in, in your life, that this reminder might be of use, and contribute to less regret for you in the future.

So I’ll end with the reminder again - I know very little. Increasingly less, in fact. But I do know that the future is fake, and my joy increases infinitely when I remember that truth.

with love, not in the future, just right now,

Sarah