The Stranger You Are Responsible To

In conversation with Jordan Peterson

There is a version of you that you have not yet become.

One of Jordan Peterson's enduring ideas is that there is a version of yourself you are capable of becoming, and that you bear some responsibility toward that person. You can feel the outline of them, the one who is more disciplined, more honest, more capable of carrying weight than you currently believe yourself to be. And Peterson's claim is that you owe that person something.

Not someday. Now.

This reframes responsibility entirely. Most people treat responsibility as a burden, an obligation imposed from outside. Peterson treats it as orientation, a compass pointed toward the most capable version of yourself, the one who is, in some sense, already waiting for you to catch up.

The practical instruction is almost startlingly simple: act today as though that future person is watching. Not to perform for them, but because acting as if they are real is what makes them real. You do not become disciplined and then act with discipline. You act with discipline, repeatedly, and discipline becomes who you are.

This is responsibility not as weight but as direction. You are not just accountable for what you do today. You are accountable to someone, the future self counting on you to have done the work that makes their existence possible at all.

My Reflection

This is the purpose behind a daily practice I already keep. Each morning I spend a few moments with the person I hope to become five, ten, or fifteen years from now. I imagine not what he owns or what he has accomplished, but how he carries himself, how he responds to difficulty, what he notices, and what he no longer wastes energy on. Then I try to embody a little that way of being today before I've earned it. More often than not, I move differently afterward. 

I think often about what I want to leave behind. My legacy. That desire eventually found its way into one of my drawings: LEGACY. It grew from a simple hope—that my work might contribute the way a lighthouse contributes. Not by controlling the water, but by offering steady light to people navigating difficult passages on their own.

I think often about what I want to leave behind.

Not just objects.

Orientation.

The older I get, the less interested I am in success for its own sake. I am much more interested in becoming someone whose work helps another person find their footing. If my drawings can help someone take one more step toward the person they’re capable of becoming, they’ve already fulfilled their purpose. Everything beyond that is a gift. 

— Nathan Snyder