We are shaped by something which does not exist.

I’m rushing as I write.  Why?

I know I’m going to be heading out on a hike through the Pentland Hills in a little while – a 50th birthday trek for a friend.  And there’s loads to do first, so I’m rushing.

It hasn’t happened yet.  I’m just imagining it.  We are shaped by the future which doesn’t exist.

We can only live now, but we cannot live well now without the future.  And there isn’t just one future, there are multiple futures, which means there are multiple nows.

We are describing what it is to be Human.  As far as we know, we are the only species to see and understand life as past, present, and future; we are able to imagine what does not exist, but we can miss how amazing a thing this is.

The future is the fuel for what makes us feel more alive or engaged in our lives – autonomy (freedom and choice), competency (skills and mastery), and relatedness (purpose beyond ourselves) – we are people of the future.

The future is already here: when we look more closely and we open our minds, when we step into the worlds of others, when together we begin to see what the world can be and within this know what it is we must do, when we are willing to try and fail and keep trying, the future will appear amongst us and we will call it “Now”.