Looking into the mirror of the present, I wonder what calls from the future?

I write about vision and what I think about is the challenge we each face in designing our own future as we navigate the challenging and changing waters of time, place, and humanity. I recall in my own life as a musician for 25 years that I was so happy to be working, playing every night, loving my work, that thinking of the future was like looking at a short thread that I was trying not to tangle up. It was like the future was NOW…not something yet to happen… Currently, I am old enough to look back in wonder thinking about how the future grabbed me on its own time and forced me to reinvent how I needed to be. In a way, the worn out saying, “had I known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself” is now much to real and much too demanding an opportunity.

That we have an economic crisis is hardly a surprise to anyone who read the predictions in recent years that the ‘bubble’ had its own life cycle not at all related to immortality: it would burst. And, I think of the youthful years of assumptions of that same immortality so characteristic of being young, strong, and far too distant from issues of health.

The young college students I speak to today are each future driven. The issues are two: Will they have a job and will they make enough money. Whether they will be happy, have meaningful lives and relationships, be able to authentically show up to a world who needs their creativity and drive…that seldom comes up. I am ever grateful each day that my life has been rich. That the many years I performed as a full time musician transformed into these many years in service to patients and families. I am grateful to have had my own bubble burst when it needed to indicate to me that change was knocking at the door.

Life-threatening illness, a traumatic accident, a sudden death of someone we care about…these are each crossroads in life that demand of us what we think we cannot deliver. And, we are forced to transcend our own paralysis. It is the relentless pull of the future and the push of the present that becomes the trajectory to help us get to another place and time…and renews life.

This is how I see the current situation in the world: the collapse of a present caused by the acountability of to future that demands we be different, that calls us to reevaluate who we are to ourselves and each other. I am ever hopeful and optimistic. Opportunity lurks behind every boulder in our way…. And the mirror into which we are forced to look reflects back the possibility and potential to be seen anew if only we can look deep enough….