It’s
the final year of school, the final year at work. Right before retirement. The
final year of a leadership term, the final year of a contract. The final
anything year of anything. Do you feel the helplessness? Of not knowing what
the future holds?
What
is the future to begin with? The future is the second right after the end of
the final. Or is it? Do you feel the hope of making something out of the
unknown future? Do you feel the fear? Can you smell it? It lies with you on the
bed and is with you when you wake. It is deep within you. It is your ticket to
complacency.
Do
you feel the pressure? The pressure of making something of your future and be
certain of it? The pressure to at least have a well laid out plan for your
future? Do you feel that shame? Of failures and mockery that await you? Of the
dethroning that awaits you? It sleeps with you and is always there when you
wake. It is deep within you, damning you to complacency. Shame has crushed your
soul and its angst. Where is that determination? Do you feel it? Does it will
you to get up? Does it strengthen your spirit? That’s your ticket out of
complacency.
Wait.
What is the future? Why are we always talking about 5 years from now and next
month and tomorrow like we know it? Sometimes we do but I’ll keep writing. Why
are we never talking about our future like its come yet it has always been with
us? We live in it every day. The future in the narrow typical perception is
elusive and can never be obtained. The future is the second right after this
second. It hasn’t happened yet but will be with us all in a second. Even in
that second, we will be thinking about 1,000,000 seconds from now and forget to
live in the future that has come and is with us.
This
is a twenty something story. In five years, we would like to be rich, married,
healthy, happy, progressing in life. The next five years will be shaped by how
we handle this second and we know it. So why are we not likely to achieve our
set goals in five years? We value the five years later more than this second,
which was the intended future five years ago. And that’s just where I and
1,000,000 others get it wrong. When we don’t value this second and live up to
it like we should, we won’t be what we should be and probably transcend it in 5
years. It’s a sad story. This second prepares us for the next second and so on
and so forth until we are rich, married, healthy, happy and progressing in
life.
Take
for instance my fifteen year old self who wanted to be a millionaire by twenty.
My fifteen year old self didn’t have a job and was getting her allowances
solely from her parents as she didn’t have a business either. First forward to
5 years later, still not a millionaire. What happened? Girl was focusing on
school and not her millionaire by twenty dreams. She didn’t try to at least
save her allowances in a Sacco or a bank, she didn’t try to familiarize herself
with how money works; she didn’t get curious about business, assets,
investments and liabilities and she didn’t do anything to propel her to her to
achieving her dream. She didn’t consider the fact that her actions at the time
would be responsible for her life at 20. In fact, I think that somewhere in her
mind, she expected that she would start working on it at 20. However ridiculous,
I forgive myself for thinking like that and refuse to fall victim again.
Once,
my amazing friend of one year and I had a conversation about the same. This
friend is a highly self-driven human being, full of fire and determination.
While we were conversing, she pointed out that she, like many of us, had fallen
victim to looking forward to the future while devaluing her present. She went
ahead to tell of how she had been pondering about the matter and had just
realized what she was doing and the insanity of it all. Being the highly
motivated and ambitious self that she is, she had gone to the extent of writing
letters to her 30-something year old self. That’s fantastic and helps in
maintaining focus. But then that’s all she did. Envisioning and visualizing but
not truly acting.
That
conversation made me wonder later on; who told us that we would live to see the
next thirty minutes, leave alone the next day or the next year yet we are
mortals? Nobody. We just assume it. We are just hopeful of it, which is not a
bad thing expect when it causes us to recklessly abandon our present moments.
At that point, it stops being hope and becomes something else. We start acting
like we are guaranteed of that future.
So
that’s what we really do with our present. Wish and dream it away. We forget to
use it as an opportunity to prepare for the next second and the next after that
one, getting better each time and not getting stuck at one point for an entire
period in our lives.
That
said, on to living in the future that is the present.
Kimani Purity,
Kenya
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