Pathwalking 96
The future is unwritten.
The future cannot be known. It can be surmised, it can be analyzed, it can be guessed at. But it cannot be known.
Living for the future can be nearly as dangerous as living in the past.
Once again I am talking about the extremes. Like black and white, love and hate, up and down, past and future are the extremes of time. Last week I explained why the past is past, and living in the past does not serve your present.
The thing is, living in the future ALSO does not serve you. Why? Yoda states it rather simply – “Always in motion is the future.”
Since for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so too does this apply to the future. The choices I make today are going to vastly change the outcome of the future.
What’s the purpose of Pathwalking if the future goal is not the point? Pathwalking is choice. Most paths have an end goal, but as I have explained over and over when you make your choices and start down a particular path, you may find that you wind up somewhere you did not set out to be. The importance of the choices and the paths themselves are the key. Pathwalking is choosing to live life, rather than let life live you.
I am not saying that having goals and ideas and plans for the future is bad. On the contrary, that is why we strive for the things we strive for. The issue is not imagining, planning for and thinking about the future – the issue is living only for the future, and not in the now.
Like the problems with living in the past, you cannot just live in the unwritten future. There are so many variables that will get us there, that we need to be present in the here and now to appreciate and to direct our paths to the future.
What does living only for the future mean? Examples of this include people who, rather than enjoy what life has to offer here-and-now, focus only on the afterlife. People who do not deal with present matters awaiting future changes like inheritances or promotions at work or relationship status changes. People who work only on seeing the future, for better or ill, but do nothing to change their current life for their own good.
We have been promised may things in the 21st century in the past. Scientists and fiction writers have presented us with visions of things both realized and not. Where are our flying cars and jetpacks, for example? Androids? Meals in pill form? But by the same token we can find moving sidewalks and aircraft crisscrossing the skies and a world connected by invisible signals and computer networks.
How did the reality of those past ideas become our present when they were about the future? At the time, when certain people were living in the here-and-now of that time, they worked to create these things. In the present people are continuing to create for the future. But to bring about the future, we have to work on the here-and-now.
This does not just apply to inventions and global changes to come. This is also applicable in deeply personal ways. For example, if you want to be married and have children and grandchildren and wealth and abundance and health – are you doing the things NOW that will bring you that future? Are you in a relationship? Working a job you love? Taking care of your diet and exercise? These seemingly simple things will affect the future you will reach. But if we do not work on them here and now, that future will get further and further away…until it might just evaporate and never be realized.
The here-and-now also can present many surprises. You may encounter unexpected finds and discoveries that will change the future now; but they can only be encountered if you are living in the present.
We live in endless possibility. We are limited only by our minds, our desires, our actions. We can manifest the life we want, IF WE CHOOSE. And that is Pathwalking. Making the choices in the present to guide our paths to reach a future we would most desire.
The past is the past. And the future is unwritten. Lessons from the former and dreams of the latter will make me into the person I am today, but I can neither live in the past or for the future. It is paramount I choose to live in the here and now. Every moment is unique, and can be as great or insignificant as I choose to make it. And that is why I am Pathwalking.
This is the ninety-sixth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking is available in print and for your Kindle.
Follow me here!
