The Catton Window
All aboard!
When I opened my suitcase after quitting my job and moving to Hawaii, a letter fell out.
It was from my brother.
He wrote about a lot of things: Courage and confidence. Conviction and commitment. Corporate jobs and copywriting.
At the end, he shared a passage from American historian Bruce Catton’s memoir.
And that’s where my brother’s letter goes from impacting me to mattering to you.
“Early youth is a baffling time,” Catton wrote. “The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning train; the junction may be interesting, but someday you will have to leave it and you do not know where the train will take you.
“Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made. In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting for a big trip to an unknown destination.”
And after my brother finished Catton’s passage, he wrote one more thing.
“This may well be one of the last times in your life you have the feeling of getting on a train without any idea of the destination. I’m jealous of that feeling.”
When’s the last time you got on a train without any idea of the destination?
Catton talks about early youth and old age. But what about late youth? Young adulthood? Middle age? Retirement?
Are the trains still running then?
Of course they are.
But the schedules are less frequent. The junction is easier to avoid. And new destinations are harder to come by.
But doesn’t that scarcity make those trains even more valuable?
Let’s call ages 30-65 the Catton Window.
In the Catton Window, routine becomes … routine.
We gain more understanding of the world. Things that once inspired childlike wonder now invoke disillusionment. “Wow!” turns to “meh.”
The schedule is full of destinations we’ve already traveled to.
And we board trains we’ve boarded hundreds of times before, wishing away the journey because we don’t think there’s anything new to see out the window.
Meanwhile, life whisks by.
Most people let life happen to them.
Few people live.
It makes sense — it’s far easier to live with negative outcomes if you can assign blame to chance or fate or the blowing of the wind.
And it’s far more difficult to accept that negative outcomes were the result of your own actions.
But as famed psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
During the Catton Window of your life, it’s easy to board the same train at the same time with the same destination every day.
But the addiction to certainty comes at the expense of adventure.
And without adventure, what use is taking the journey?
When life becomes mundane, head down to that junction.
Go beyond the range of imagination.
Board a train with no idea where it’ll end up.
And, just for a moment, let yourself forget about the destination.
It’s unknown.
Isn’t that the whole idea?