Love for Your Future
Courage is how I make my future possible. Every future I have ever wanted came from taking a risk, expanding my comfort zone, taking on a new challenge, or doing something that scared me. That is the connection between the two. If I want to care for what happens next, I have to be willing to do the thing I am afraid of today. For years, I assumed that caring for my future meant playing it as safe as humanly possible. But the harder you try to guarantee complete certainty, the more anxious and rigid you become.
Courage, I realized then, wasn’t about feeling brave. It was about doing things that would make me feel scared. When courage became my identity, I stopped taking risks and hid behind what felt safe and easy. When I let myself challenge my own identity of courage and do something that could make me feel afraid, I opened myself up to becoming even braver.
Erik Thor, Why I Love
What Regret Taught Me
The trip I didn’t take
I was seventeen years old when my class was going to India for a three-week school trip. The thought of a trip to India frightened me to the bone. Instead of admitting to my classmates that upset stomachs and unfamiliar airports frightened me, I announced that I was boycotting the flight on strict environmental grounds. Every time I let fear decide for me, I regretted it. Fear passed in an afternoon. The decisions I let fear make for me were still sitting there ten years later.
Brave for her, brave for us
A few months after Nina and I moved to Sweden and started living together, I had a panic attack and booked a hotel room for the night. Sitting alone, I realized that every single time I had stood before a positive change for the future, fear had shown up at my doorstep. We talked, and she booked tickets to Gröna Lund. We went on the roller coasters together, and the moment the safety bar clicked down, I realized I could feel both afraid and excited at the same time.
Realizing I Had a Future
At 34 years old, I had a lot of failed dreams behind me. So many of the things I thought I wanted had never turned out. And while I had made my peace with that, I had also given up on dreaming.
I avoided thinking about what I wanted because I didn’t want to step out of my position. More than anything, I had grown afraid to dream because I dreaded disappointment. I didn’t let myself want things, because wanting them set me up for disappointment.
The most important part of learning to care for my future was realizing that I had one. I have a real future ahead of me, and I have something to live for. The decisions I make today carry forward to the version of me who comes next, and I care about him. I want him to know what it is like to be a dad.
That is what hope means to me. Not a guarantee that everything will go smoothly, but knowing that I have a future, and that what I do today reaches it. For years I had given up on dreaming and told myself it was pointless. Hope came back the day I understood that I had somewhere to go.
“What settled the argument for me was regret. The things I regret are not the risks I took. They are the ones I didn’t.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Your Future Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Practical Future Inquiry
Reflect on the difference between pretending to be brave and practicing real courage:
- Where do you stick to safe roles where you already look confident to hide your inner hesitation?
- What is something you secretly want to try, but still dismiss with “I’m just not that kind of person”?
- What ambition did you avoid so you would never have to feel disappointed?
Reflection & Practice
Facing What Scares You
What difficult conversation or boundary are you actively dodging right now? If looking foolish had zero consequences, what would you start tomorrow?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
See how your love for your future balances with your care for your present life and relationships across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 11 of Why I Love on overcoming fear, getting on the roller coaster, and realizing you have a future.
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