Do what you would wish you had done when you shall be eighty

Do what you would wish you had done when you shall be eighty is a decision-making rule that asks a person facing uncertainty to judge the present from the vantage point of a future self. In the conversation where Phil Gordon tells Anne Shirley about accepting Jonas Blake’s proposal, the maxim turns advice into a form of self-questioning: instead of waiting for perfect certainty, a person can consider which choice a long life is likely to leave them glad they made.

The Rule and Its Speaker

Phil introduces the advice while Anne asks whether she will be able to keep making up her own mind. Phil answers that she does not know, then explains that Jonas has given her “a splendid rule.” Its practical instruction is to do what one would wish to have done at eighty. Phil offers the maxim as something Jonas gave her, not as a rule she invented or as a promise that every choice will be easy.

The exchange gives the advice a particular context. Phil has just described saying yes to Jonas almost before he finished asking, because she feared he might change his mind. She is happy with her answer, but Anne’s question shifts the conversation from this single decision to the continuing difficulty of choosing. The rule responds to that uncertainty by supplying a perspective rather than a list of correct answers.

Looking Back Before Choosing

The maxim’s imagined older self creates a small distance from the pressure of the present. A person considers not only what feels easiest now, but what they may later wish they had done. The advice therefore joins immediate choice to future consequence without claiming that the future can be known in advance. Its test is personal: the imagined judgment belongs to the chooser, not to an outside authority.

That emphasis matters in Phil’s account of her engagement. She says she had once considered marrying either Alec or Alonzo, but later realized there was only one man she could marry. She describes deciding for herself as a new experience, and says it was delightful to know the certainty was her own rather than somebody else’s. Set beside that admission, Jonas’s rule supports independent judgment: it offers Phil a way to think through perplexity while leaving the decision hers.

Meaning Within the Conversation

Phil relates the maxim lightly, adding that Jonas can make up his mind quickly and that it would be uncomfortable for two people in one household to have too much mind. The joke keeps the advice from sounding like a rigid formula. It also presents the pair’s difference in decisiveness as something they can accommodate, rather than a reason Phil must surrender her own judgment.

The rule’s significance lies in this combination of reflection and agency. It asks the chooser to imagine a longer horizon, but it does not prescribe whom to marry or how every future dilemma should be resolved. In Phil’s conversation with Anne, the advice gives memorable form to a broader change: Phil has moved from entertaining several possible suitors to recognizing whom she loves and taking responsibility for her choice. The future-looking test helps her consider a decision as her own, both now and in the life she will later remember.