Illustration by © Steven Bourelle | Dreamstime.com
Part III – The Future: Where Dreams Live…
“Welcome to the future,” yells the entrepreneur hawking the latest technological wonders. And after all, why shouldn’t he? The past is gone; the present is fleeting, and the future is where dreams live, and there’s no better way to sell than to sell to where people’s dreams live.
The future is that place we haven’t been, but want to see, feel, experience and touch. It’s that wanting of something we don’t have; it’s that desire of the untouchable that intrigues. Yet when it arrives, our yearning turns again to that which has yet to evolve. Life’s perpetual conundrum: live in the future, but miss the present (see Part II: The Present and Being in It…).
The future isn’t real. Maybe it can be, but when it is, it becomes the present. The present is our essence. We can anticipate and we can prognosticate, but we can’t be certain the future will come. We plan and we work, but reward isn’t our guarantee.
Austrian-born American management consultant and author Peter Drucker (1909-2005) stated that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” And yet the act of creation happens only in the present. It’s what we do here and now that dictates our future. Do we squander our present or do we value it? Are we drifting aimlessly or are we working with intent? Do we have goals and objectives in mind or do we fill our time with mindless chatter and empty thought?
We can’t take the future for granted. What’s here today can be gone tomorrow. Our certainty, if any, lies in our ability and our effort. Ability without effort is meaningless; effort without ability is precarious. Bring ability and effort to bear and the future knows no bounds. Magnify our present with focus, thought and action, and the future has a strange way of appearing.
The onus is on us and no one else. The future doesn’t care for excuses, alibis and what if’s. Dreams don’t appear from thin air and the Genie’s lamp of three wishes is but a fairy tale. We can’t harp about the past (see Part I: The Past and What Memories Mean…) and we can’t blindly believe the future. It’s the present where our attention belongs. The past may hold our lessons and the future may harbor our dreams, but it’s the present where the past ends and the future begins.
As we move through life, it’s incumbent upon us to recognize this reality. Dreams aren’t built upon wishes, but are built upon reality, and a faulty view of the here and now yields a faulty future. If we are to achieve our dreams, if we are to achieve the future we desire, then we must be diligent in our pursuit.
And it’s in the present the pursuit begins; it’s in the past it was born, and it’s in the future where it’s to be realized…
For more check out the Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner of 2014 & 2016, The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here.
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