Do you want to fear a future you resent, or focus on a future you create in the present?
Do you even want to know what happens next, if all it does is blind you from what happens right now?
Do you want to focus on a future you fear, if it prevents you from building what’s important, right now, right here?
Benefit and harm all depend on your perspective. The futurist John Smart suggests looking at phenomena, trends, and events through four different lenses (the “Foresight Tetrad“):
Every level has its own agenda, but their interests are rarely fully aligned.
For example: for evolution and natural selection to work, a life form must have a reasonably short lifespan, reproduce quickly, and most importantly, not clone their DNA perfectly. Because small genetic reproduction errors help a species evolve and become better adapted to our environment.
Sn an organizational/collective level (taking all of humanity together) those genetic errors are a good thing. In fact, without them, human beings in our current brain, with our current intelligence, wouldn’t even exist. Not at a species level, and not at an individual level.
But to stumble upon a couple of beneficial “genetic errors”, evolution also needs tons of harmful genetic errors.
That means that every newborn runs the risk of genetic errors that can cause medical conditions, pain, and suffering – on an individual level.
We suffer individually to evolve collectively.
Another example: in our quest to improve the condition of humanity as a whole (at the organizational/collective level), we’re harming other species and change the climate (at a global level).
Ignoring the principles the universe and the earth as an ecosystem might well lead to collapse of that ecosystem – and result in the collapse of humanity.
The universe has an agenda.
Natural selection has an agenda.
The global earth has an agenda.
Humanity as a whole has an agenda.
Individuals have an agenda.
We can’t afford to ignore any.
The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
I’m okay with publishing 80% rubbish if that’s what it takes to stumble upon something good.
But if only 20% of what I publish is any good, and I publish one post a week, then on average, I’ll only publish something insightful once every five weeks.
If I publish once a day, then on average, I’ll publish something insightful more than once a week.
This is why I’m okay with publishing a daily blog post.
It’ also why I write pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling every day, most of it rubbish, whining, scattered thoughts, if that’s what it takes to get to that one insight or breakthrough. Sculpting away, day by day.
Write more rubbish, and you’ll write more good stuff too.
Volume matters.
If only someone told you before
That no matter how loud the others shout
Nobody has it figured out
If only someone told you before
That the rules you use to govern your life
Aren’t set in stone?
If only someone told you before
That it’s totally okay
To find your own way
If only someone told you before…
I guess all I really want to say today is:
There’s something you’re doing great at.
There always is.
Can you see it?
You don’t need to know how the story will end to start it.
In fact, if you think you know how it’ll end, you close yourself off from the possibility of it ending even better than you ever thought possible.
So start without fear. Start with an open mind.
Then keep going without fear. Keep going with an open mind.
Because you don’t even know half of what’s truly possible.
Isn’t that a nice way to start your day?
The more challenges you face
The more you grow
The more life will show
That all you can do
Is stay the course
Persevere
Show up
Stay in the flow
