Creating the Future

You and I are creating the future right now, whether we do so consciously or not.
 
We can create that future by seeking to end what is heart-breakingly wrong with the present — ending poverty, ending sickness, ending war.
 
Or we can seek to create what is joyfully right for our future, solving our problems along the way.
 
Creating a peaceful, healthy, humane world for our grandkids and their grandkids is not a Pollyanna pipe dream.  It is instead the very real path humankind has been moving along for thousands of years, made all the more visible in our own lifetimes.
 
200 years ago, citizens of the slave-trading-nation that was the United States of America would have declared it impossible for a black man to be president.
 
100 years ago, citizens of the world would have declared it impossible to put a man on the moon.
 
How easy it is in hindsight to trace the path from
     “impossible dream”
          through “problems to be solved”
                to “reality simply taken for granted.”
 
Imagine if those paths had been walked with clearer intent!  Imagine that intent informs the path we will begin walking now!
 
We have all the tools we need to build that path. They are the same tools we use to get the airport in time for a flight, or to ensure dinner is ready when our guests arrive.  Working backwards from those events, we think nothing of creating a path that will lead to the future.
 
That same reverse engineering of cause-and-effect steps is waiting for us to use it for this far greater purpose.
 
You and I are creating the future right now.  The choice, then, is ours.
 
Will we continue to take steps to sustain our planet as it is, one by one eliminating what is wrong?  Or will we tether our steps to a future that will allow our heirs to thrive?
 
If we aim at thriving,
      and create a path to thriving,
            we will thrive
                  because every step we take
                         is creating the future right now.