Recently my supervisor told me that I didn’t make the Research Quality Framework (I spent too much time blogging? WHOOPS!) list distributed throughout this nation. This means that for the next few years I will be considered a “teaching scholar”. This was a tremendous disappointment to me because I set high goals for myself. That said, when this happened it occurred to me that we often put stuff off in our lives so we can reach some goal in the future without realising that the future is actually now. In my case I had hopes but I never converted the substance of hope into something real.
Now is really all we can say we have? If say I will do it tomorrow… yes that’s true I probably will. However, in the scheme of things I really don’t think tomorrow will ever be upon me. By the time I get to tomorrow it’s already gone. I can’t go back in time because essentially time is a concept. Remove that barrier and all that you have left is the idea of now… the ever present NOW. Realising that all we have is now makes you wonder doesn’t it. When I got that bad report from my supervisor I thought to myself: but I worked so hard. The reality is I am in this position because in the past I made decisions that negatively impacted the present. To change I need to have a dream or vision in mind and make daily steps toward it. Some might be impossible… that’s no problem… that’s why God gave us faith.
What is the future … really?
Like time, the future is also a concept. It is really part of our language. When we say the future we are really expressing some kind of expectation or hope that things will be that way at a distant point in our horizon. A goal is another way of expressing a hope. Hope is a great goal setter because it expresses the future arrival point of something that we want to exist. But it’s not really tangible is it? The future does not really exist like the present does it? Think about that.
What is tangible… really?
What is tangible is this moment. What just happened when I typed that line was real. What happens after I finish this sentence I really have no idea. I could get hit by airplane parts. What is actual is that I have moments in my life that culminate up to a lived experience that I can hopefully share with someone at some point. There will come a time when the present becomes the past and the future becomes now… but in reality all there ever is and there ever will be is now. The problem is our linear concepts of time and the future. These are helpful ways of organising things and structuring the nature of our lives (i.e. getting to work on time) but you could take away that concept and work would still exist. I think that work will always exist so long as the earth remains.
What can I do about the future?
In short, nothing. What you can do is starting realising that now is what you have and live like you mean it. Hope at some stage has to become tangible like everything else if you are going to experience it. Kenny Rogers warned the ladies not to fall in love with a dreamer but I would urge you to become a dreamer but don’t leave your projects out there is space. Make them real. Experience them in the imagination of your heart.
I can hear you thinking, ‘oh that’s great Mr. Houghton… but how do I make the unreal real. Do I look like a worker of miracles to you? In a later post I will discuss this in more detail. It sounds spooky and downright difficult to understand but the bottom line is you must realise (as in bring into the present tense) what you hope for otherwise it will remain in the future, which really is just a concept we use to make sense of what is yet to happen. Who knows what the future holds?
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