Where do you want to be 20 years from now?  If you’re lucky- where will you be?  What will you be doing and who with, what for and to what end?  What if you’re not lucky?

Don’t want to think about it?  Can’t imagine?  Haven’t got a clue?  Haven’t got a plan? Got a plan, started it a couple of weeks ago, but it’s already changed…things haven’t gone to plan?

If you’re 20 (on the eve of a big birthday) you’ll be 40 (very big birthday).  If you’re 30 (even bigger birthday than 21) you’ll be 50.  If you’re 50 you’ll be 70 (retired? As old as your parents now?) and if you’re 10, you’re probably not reading this…

Really can’t get your head around it and really uncomfortable about being asked to?  Ok, how about 20 years ago then, if it’s any easier – 1992?  Can you remember that?  Of any significance?  Were you born?  Were you alive to possibilities, had you already got a plan, an idea, a sense of the way you wanted things to be…now?

I was going to ante-natal classes, on the verge of becoming a father for the first time, auditioning for the National Trust’s touring T.I.E. theatre company, and about to learn to read music and to learn how to play the saxophone.  John Major was a lame duck, highly unpopular, unelected PM who was facing electoral humiliation in the inevitable forthcoming May election…I ‘d put money on it…luckily I didn’t.  Oh yeah, and the country was in recession.

As for America?  Even before the U.K. could cast it’s vote in favour of more of the same from messrs Major and co, it was about to be rocked and shocked to the core as Rodney King took a beating from a couple of bored LAPD traffic cops, captured on film (this was before everyone had a mobile phone – but don’t get me started on technology advances or otherwise), which beamed across the nation, sparking the L.A. riots. And sparking a fashion trend among our black youth (primarily) that endures to this day, namely the wearing of your jeans halfway round your anus.

Apparently, as the National Guard re-gained control of the streets of LA, when they arrested the youths, they made them remove their belts (and their laces – but don’t get me started on the rights and wrongs of how you tie up your shoe laces) for their own safety, thus resulting in the now all too familiar exposure of the said undergarments…a look instantly adopted by the conscious youth across all 50 of the united states and beyond as a sign of solidarity, allegiance and defiance.  Fight the power and bare your cheeks in resistance.  Calvin Klein was delighted.

Can I just say that last paragraph was written entirely from memory, no assistance from the internet…just like the old days.  I admit, a lot of 1992 is lost as far as my memory goes, but what does remain is vivid and like it was only yesterday, and not 20 years ago.

So what about now?  Was there anything I did or said back then that has any bearing or consequence on what I say or do now?   Undoubtedly yes, but I don’t know what….exactly…though there are a couple of obvious circumstances.  I’ve now got a 20 year old man, my son, occupying my flat and my waking hours with his baggage, his swagger and his plans, for instance.

A lot of what happens in the next 20 years will be out of our control, down to luck, chance, circumstance, right place, wrong time and the many permutations of said equation.  However, it doesn’t mean to say it’s not worth thinking about, musing upon and considering for at least a moment.

I think there’s something in it, I’m just not sure what it is.  However, I was struck by J. B. Priestley’s ‘Time and the Conways’ and Arnold Wesker’s ‘Chicken Soup With Barley’ both of which deploy the use and analysis of a 20 year period to devastating and arresting dramatic effect.

In the latter, Wesker captures the hearts, dreams and disappointment of an idealistic generation as fascism is booted off the streets of East London in 1936 ,only for what seems to be the credible and principled alternative to be completely discredited by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, 20 years later, in 1956.

Priestly is similarly adroit, as his leading character is filled with giddy excitement and expectation as she celebrates her 21st birthday in 1919. The First World War has ended, Europe is safe and Britain is a great place to be. Things are looking up and everyone has everything to live for. Fast forward 20 years: now she’s just turned 41, when life should really have begun, if it’s ever going to begin – and it’s 1939, the brink of war. The fascists may have lost the battle on the streets of London, but now there’s a war to be fought, and things are not so cut and dried - the stock market has crashed – the depression bit deep and on a personal level, the family’s fortune has gone, she’s still single and no longer coyly fighting off the attention of admirers….tough times ahead indeed.

Though he’s not overtly applying the rule of 20 by any means, Nick Payne’s play ‘Constellations’ (currently playing at the Royal Court) is equally arresting and engaging for its flexible and seamless use of time, and the characters ability to flit effortlessly through it, beyond it, around it and in and out of it on stage. For which he is to be applauded.

It’s an old job interview question, isn’t it: where do you want to be five years from now?  Never anymore than that.  Why not?  Five years, is that it?  Is that all we can handle, all we can possibly conceive of at any one stretch of time?  A five year plan is seen as a grown-up, responsible, possibly even visionary thing to have.  Business plans, artistic visions, civic plans …all three-five years.  Prime Ministers and Presidents usually get a term of five years. Our education is roughly in blocks of three-six years (a couple of random years in between maybe if you go to nursery or stay in the sixth form) even if you’re a doctor, architect, lawyer or a PhD scholar, you’re pushing it if it’s anymore than 7 years….and the thought of that is often regarded as mind-boggling and an endurance.  But why not think big, beyond the imaginable, beyond the place we’re never encouraged to go, bigger than 10 – a decade, -and dare to go to 20.  It’s not easy, but be brave, you never know what it might unearth.

Last year we all got very excited, pensive, philosophical, nervous, and frightened even about the 10th anniversary of 9\11, and nothing happened.  However, maybe it’s not 10 years ago that is significant, maybe all eyes should be on 2020.