This piece has taken me the longest to write because so many comments not on my blog but to me in person have come about my perception of living for today. I am grateful for the conversations that it has generated and how even though my mindset has not been swayed it has allowed me to grow in understanding of how and why I see it. To make something clear however I need to reiterate that while I said people do move to quick I think, even in the present you have to keep moving, there is no sense of being perfectly still, but rather, a chance to look around and see what it is that surrounds you. There are many paths to tread in life, and if you are solely focused on the future you will never see more than a few. Too many people use the analogy; I cannot wait for (Blank) to be done with so I can get on with (blank/life). I have heard it from my family who are in high school, family who are working, friends in university, friends simply going through life. Yes when things are tough we want to move past them quickly, no one wants to suffer, however, if you do not look around you; you are going to miss out on life. You are going to keep on waiting for it to start never really seeing that there will always be another hurtle to climb over and that it’s the challenge that is life, not the hereafter. We only have one shot at this for all we know, so why are we waiting for something to come. If you do not have time, you only do not because you do not take time.
The future is uncertain, yes small things we can foresee and plan for, but the grand scheme, our reason for being is not revealed to us, so why are we as humans so concerned with it. Yes you have to look for future generations and I see that more in parents than anywhere else. We want you to have better than we did; each generation is faced with new challenge and different consequences for their actions. My and your generation are no different. We must all try to make a difference in our world not only for us but for those to come. Yet, we cannot say that when I get here I shall start this. I live in Japan, yes, I am living day to day, and I have my challenges and my joys. But this is life; I do not pretend that this is merely a stopping point before something else. Anything could happen whilst I am here. We do not know tomorrow, and even as best we prepare for it, we in truth are utterly not ready. A business makes a 25 year plan, but also a ten year, a five year and a yearly plan, each year it is adapted and changed, they have a goal that they still reach, but rarely do they obtain their original goal because as event occur their goal changes, but if you focus so readily on that goal, that future, you can in fact miss those changes that occur, and then when you get there, what it is, is not what it was, and you have moved nowhere.
I see the future as something you look forward too, not race too. Someone made the analogy of a gold fish in the fish bowl about the present, saying if we were to live for today, then we never will go very far. Yes that can be true, if you do not learn from the past, A goldfish does not know better because it does not remember what came before and why is should keep moving. However, like the race horse which wears blinders and only sees the end, it does not see the other horses, those around it, the grass, the lake, the stands, it only sees forward…if you act through life like that, you will reach the end, but it will be short, it will be empty and whatever it is you find at the end will be hallow.
Time is relative, it is not a linear object, and we know the future is coming, and the past is going, and where we stand today we will not stand tomorrow or yesterday. So why is it that we see the future as something that we must fear and best prepare for so not to get left behind, when we already are behind. Just think that though I write this now I write from your tomorrow, I live in your future, and you live in my past, but we stand in the same spot. The present. I look to the future, I do not plan for it, I set things I wish to follow, and follow, but the world and the future cannot be predicted, so I will not try to have a divine sense of foreseeing the best way. I look at where I stand today, where I could go tomorrow and where I have been. The future, is not the end of the equation, it is part of it, you must not think of it as a goal, or an end point, because, when you get there…then what? You still have to go on living.
The future is of the utmost importance, which is why it is something we cannot touch, only look too, but if you race to it, you will miss out on the paths needed to get there in a manner so you understand what it is you find.
Look ahead, but do not forget to see where it is you are, and where you have come from, because untimely where we go, where we are is where we have come from.
The wind does not know its future, letting only nature guide it.
