Contentment With Today. Anticipation for Tomorrow.

Last Updated on September 25, 2026 by Michelle

I am 48.

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the person I want to become.

At first, I imagined myself at 70.

What would an ordinary Tuesday look like? I wrote about it in the past week.

Would I still be healthy and independently mobile?

Would my children still want to have dinner with us?

Would I still be intellectually curious?

Would I still have meaningful work?

Would there still be something ahead of me that I was excited about?

I loved the exercise.

But 70 felt far away.

Twenty-two years is a long time.

There will be versions of me between now and then that I cannot possibly imagine today.

So I brought her closer.

Instead of meeting 70-year-old me, I decided to meet 58-year-old me.

Ten years from now.

And I realised I didn’t really want to know what she had achieved.

I wanted to know something much more interesting.

How does it feel to be her?

A Morning in Ho Chi Minh City

Perhaps the answer came to me because of where I was sitting.

I was spending a few days in Ho Chi Minh City with my husband.

He was there for business, and I came along.

That morning, we were sitting together at Opera at Park Hyatt Saigon, one of my favourite hotels.

We had finished breakfast.

He opened his laptop and started working.

I started thinking and writing about Be Your Own Role Model.

Neither of us needed anything from the other.

We were simply beside each other.

There was something about that moment that felt incredibly good.

The environment was beautiful.

Luxurious, but not showy.

There was nowhere I needed to rush to.

I had the financial freedom to be there.

I was thinking about something that fascinated me.

I was developing BYORM, something I increasingly believe may become my life’s work.

And somewhere underneath all of that was another feeling.

There was still something ahead.

Something I was building.

Something I didn’t completely understand yet.

Something I was excited to find out.

I remember thinking:

I want this feeling at 58.

Not necessarily this hotel.

Not necessarily Ho Chi Minh City.

Not even this exact life.

This feeling.

Maybe We Design Our Future Lives the Wrong Way

When we imagine ourselves ten years from now, we tend to think in nouns.

The house.

The job.

The business.

The amount of money.

The city.

The title.

The holidays.

The achievements.

But those things don’t necessarily tell us whether we will enjoy being that person.

So perhaps before asking:

What do I want to have at 58?

I should ask:

How do I want it to feel to be 58?

That question produced very different answers.

Togetherness Without Dependency

I want my husband beside me.

Not because we need to spend every moment together.

Actually, the Park Hyatt morning was wonderful partly because we weren’t doing the same thing.

He had his work.

I had mine.

We could sit together for hours, occasionally say something, return to what we were doing, order another coffee, and simply enjoy knowing the other person was there.

I want that at 58.

Togetherness without dependency.

I want us to have independent interests and independent thoughts.

I want us to continue becoming individually interesting people.

But I want there to be enormous comfort in returning to one another.

I don’t want closeness to mean needing constant attention.

I want it to mean:

I like my life. You like yours. And I particularly like that we get to live them beside each other.

Beauty and Luxury Without Pretension

I know this about myself.

Beautiful environments affect me.

I like thoughtful design.

Beautiful hotels.

Lovely coffee cups.

Quiet spaces.

Excellent service.

Comfort at luxurious level.

I don’t think I need to pretend otherwise.

But I don’t want luxury for the purpose of signalling luxury.

I want beauty and luxury without pretension.

The kind that makes your shoulders drop.

The kind that creates space in your head.

The kind that makes an ordinary breakfast feel slightly more delightful.

At 58, I hope I still notice these things.

Not because they prove anything about my life.

Simply because I enjoy them.

Financial Ease

I have thought about financial freedom for years.

But increasingly, I think the feeling I’m actually seeking is financial ease.

Enough.

Enough that money creates choices rather than anxiety.

Enough that I can accompany my husband on a short trip because I want to.

Enough that I can sit in a beautiful hotel without mentally calculating whether I should be somewhere cheaper.

Enough that I can choose meaningful work even if it isn’t the work that pays me the most.

Enough that my time belongs largely to me.

Financial freedom, to me, isn’t about accumulating the largest possible number.

It is about reaching a point where money quietly steps into the background and allows life to come forward.

Intellectual Aliveness

I want to remain fascinated.

At 48, I am curious about psychology, neuroscience, health, dermatology, aging, human behaviour and increasingly the question of how we design a good second half of life.

Will those still interest me at 58?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I hope there are subjects I care about at 58 that I don’t even know exist today.

The topic isn’t important.

The feeling is.

I want my mind to still light up.

I want to hear something and think:

That’s interesting.

I want to read.

Ask questions.

Change my mind.

Learn from people younger than me.

Discover things I didn’t know.

I don’t want to reach a stage of life where I feel that I already understand enough.

I want intellectual aliveness.

Purpose

And I want work.

Not obligatory work.

Not work because I need another title.

Not work because I need to prove that I am still relevant.

Work because I have something I care about.

At 58, I hope BYORM has evolved far beyond what I can imagine today.

Perhaps I’m writing.

Perhaps I’m speaking.

Perhaps I’m having long conversations on podcasts.

Perhaps I’m doing something completely different.

But I want to wake up knowing there is something I can contribute.

Something worth thinking about.

Something worth making better.

Something useful beyond myself.

I don’t dream about a future where I have nothing to do.

I dream about a future where I have much greater freedom to decide what is worth doing.

Yeoyu

Then there is a Korean word that captures something English doesn’t quite capture for me.

여유. Yeoyu.

It can mean room.

Space.

Leisure.

Composure.

A sense of having enough margin—in time, money or mind—that you aren’t constantly pressed against the edges of your life.

Yeoyu is being able to finish breakfast without immediately looking at the clock.

It is having enough time between two commitments to walk rather than rush.

It is being able to sit with a thought before needing to turn it into an answer.

It is having enough financial margin that an unexpected expense doesn’t destabilise you.

It is having enough emotional space not to react immediately.

It is the opposite of living perpetually at capacity.

And perhaps more than almost anything else, I want Yeoyu at 58.

Not emptiness.

My life can still be full.

But I want space inside the fullness.

I want to notice the sunlight.

I want to hear the background music.

I want to enjoy the coffee.

I want to have enough margin to realise:

This is a good moment.

Because what is the point of designing a wonderful life if we are moving too quickly to notice that we’re living it?

Anticipation

And then there is the feeling I perhaps want most.

Anticipation.

For a while, I thought anticipation meant having trips on the calendar.

A holiday next month.

A dinner next week.

A new place to visit.

Those things matter to me.

I love having something to look forward to.

But recently I’ve realised anticipation goes much deeper.

What I really want at 58 is the feeling that:

Something interesting is still unfolding in my life.

I don’t want to have arrived.

I don’t want everything to be finished.

I don’t want my best stories to exist only in the past.

I want something I haven’t figured out yet.

An idea I’m developing.

A place I haven’t been.

A person I haven’t met.

A question I can’t yet answer.

Something I’m building.

Something I’m becoming.

I want there always to be a little bit of:

I wonder what happens next.

Perhaps that is why the idea of conventional retirement has never completely appealed to me.

I want freedom from obligatory work.

But I don’t want freedom from endeavour.

I don’t want a life with nothing left to do.

I want a life with things I choose to do.

And things I can’t wait to do.

Contentment With Today. Anticipation for Tomorrow.

Sitting at Park Hyatt that morning, I realised I was experiencing both.

I wasn’t wishing I were somewhere else.

I wasn’t waiting for my future life to begin.

I loved exactly where I was.

My husband beside me.

A beautiful environment.

Time.

Coffee.

Interesting ideas.

Financial ease.

Something meaningful to work on.

I felt content.

But at exactly the same time, I was excited.

About BYORM.

About the person I am becoming.

About the second half of my life.

About things that haven’t happened yet.

Contentment with today. Anticipation for tomorrow.

Maybe those two feelings don’t have to compete.

Perhaps a good life contains both.

Too much focus on tomorrow and we spend our lives waiting to arrive.

Too much contentment without anticipation and perhaps life gradually loses some of its forward energy.

I want to be able to say:

I love my life.

And, in the very next breath:

I can’t wait to see what comes next.

What Do You Want to Feel Ten Years From Now?

Maybe imagining our future selves doesn’t need to begin with goals.

Try something different.

Imagine yourself ten years from now.

Don’t ask what house you own.

Don’t ask how much money you have.

Don’t ask what your title is.

Don’t ask how successful you’ve become.

Instead, ask:

How do I want it to feel to be me?

My answers, today, are becoming clearer.

Togetherness without dependency.

Beauty and luxury without pretension.

Financial ease.

Intellectual aliveness.

Purpose.

Yeoyu.

Anticipation.

Then comes the more interesting question:

Where do those feelings already exist in my life today?

Because perhaps we don’t have to wait ten years for our future lives.

That morning in Ho Chi Minh City taught me that.

For a few hours, I was already living quite a lot of the life I want at 58.

Which means I received the reward once already.

And if the choices I make today help preserve and deepen those feelings over the next decade, perhaps I will receive the reward again.

Maybe that is one of the best forms of compounding there is.

Not simply building wealth for later.

Not sacrificing today for tomorrow.

But deliberately creating a life that becomes richer over time while being worth living along the way.

I don’t want to spend the next ten years waiting for 58-year-old me.

I want to borrow from her.

I want to practise her life.

I want to protect the things I already have that she will one day be grateful I didn’t lose.

And ten years from now, I hope she wakes up and feels something very simple:

Contentment with today.

And then she thinks about what is ahead and smiles.

Anticipation for tomorrow.