future – Life Is Color

The Eyes of the Future

The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.

Terry Tempest Williams

♦

And here we are, it is 2020 and the world seems to be teetering on a precipice hovering over oblivion. Do we continue our slide down or can we save ourselves?

Our bad habits are catching up with us. It’s time to fess up and pay up and work together to solve our collective problems. We do not have the time to entertain the self-serving and the idiots they control. Some deny that the house is burning but we are surrounded by smoke and others are sneaking out the back door with whatever they can get and leaving everyone else to burn.

Hopefully we have finally reached the bottom of this pit that we have dug for ourselves and now we can begin the climb out.

I pray there is not another bottom farther down we cannot fathom.

I have seen an ugliness in my fellow human that in my ignorance I hadn’t realized before. An ugliness I could never have imagined.

These revelations come on like waves, one right after another after another. It difficult not to give in to despair.

There is no time for despair.

We are seeing history in the making and our collective future depends on what is happening now.

There is a disconnect. Those who are in power are very adept at dividing us; we the people of the world. We need to band together and see beyond what years of manipulation and lies have done to us.

We can save ourselves because we must, we have no choice. What is the alternative?

Whatever collective ugliness we harbor pales in comparison to what could be our glorious potential.

Am I too optimistic , or too pessimistic to be realistic?

I have a feeling the eyes of the future will be judgmental. History will not look kindly on us, on our collective malaise, on our willingness to go along with the status quo. Leaving our collective mess for future generations will not be viewed lightly. For as much as our ancestors sacrificed for us, it seems we cannot do the same for future generations. They will curse us I am afraid.

I cannot avoid the feeling of guilt. The feeling of helplessness and the fear of a very scary and very possible future but I have hope.

I have hope and I’m not the only one.

I have hope the eyes of the future will able to see with a wisdom we relics of the past seemingly cannot.

I hope they will overlook our frailties and see that indeed hindsight is 20/20.

I hope they will see an awakening, a willingness to shed our past ways and embrace a kinder, more sustainable existence for us all.

I hope they will see us band together and work towards a common goal: our very existence.

I have hope for that.

❤SBI

The future of humans

I worry about our future. I wonder if our machines will become more natural to us than our own humanness. I see it time and time again and more and more all the time. People ignoring one another in public. Turning the other way. Looking right past a person, almost denying someone’s existence.

I see people on their phones. Talking away to some distant person, ignoring the one in front of them. Be it the checker who’s bagging your groceries, the person at the counter of the post office, your dinner companions.

I see these space cadets walking down the street, in the street, eyes cast down on their little box of insanity. Ignoring the real world of real people, real streets with real cars on them. Engrossed in some distraction on the screen, some vitally important game or text that cannot wait. People endlessly texting or tapping or something or another. Thumbs flipping away, eyes glazed over, mind placid and unchallenged.

We are an instant generation. Our ancestors were forced to have patience. Life generally works that way. But we humans have perverted the system. What used to take time and hard work, now takes an instant. The minute itself stretches and contracts depending on the situation. We are a race that can spend hours upon hours, slack-jawed staring at a screen and still have a hard time waiting 60 seconds for a convenience store burrito.

How much have we lost already? We of the quick and convenient. That human knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Homespun talents. Hardscrabble necessities. How to grow your own food, how to darn a sock, make a quilt, pluck a chicken.

And knowledge of a more ancient wisdom: The healing power of plants, the power of belief and living at one with the earth instead of against it; as if it were some sort of adversary. The power to walk in the woods without making a sound or leaving a trace.The wild arts. How to make a fire, how to live off the land.

I know its easy for me to say; to judge. Do I have any of these practical talents? Not really. Beyond my urbanized knowledge of plants and animals through books and gardening in my backyard, I am pretty much useless in the real woods. If I were stranded alone in the true wilderness, the odds would be against me.

Our human civilization, our very existence is dependant on “progress”. Always upward and onward. Always a new hill or people to conquer. A mountain to climb, a resource to be exploited. We have colonised, revolutionised and lost our sights and priorities, maybe even our collective minds as we rape and pillage and steal from the future generations, who will have no choice but to try to live in the mess we’ll leave behind.

We have lost our way. We are losing our humanity. We are losing our collective soul, we are losing ourselves. And it is ourselves who we need to conquer not nature.

This reckless attitude we humans have taken toward nature. This need to be dominant over nature, this very human need to conquer no longer serves us as it once had. Nature is fighting back. All the lies and ad campaigns can no longer hide this from us. We are “progressing” ourselves right down the road to extinction. Is this our future? Many believe it is.

It seems the one’s in charge on this planet are in race to use up what is left and get it all before everyone else can. Our beautiful Planet Earth has become a commodity, for sale to the highest bidder. But our planet, our mother, belongs to us all.

We are being sold out and generations upon generations will hate us for it. They will ask why. Why did we just sit back and let this all happen? What will our answer be?

Strawberryindigo.

“America was once a paradise of timberland and stream but it is dying because of the greed and money lust of a thousand little kings who slashed the timber all to hell and would not be controlled and changed the climate and stole the rainfall from posterity.” Don Marquis (1935)

The power of magical thinking

Imagine the future, I dare you to look the future right in the face. Imagine yourself 10 years from now….try to imagine. Pretend you are gazing into a mirror, what do you see?

Are you pleased or petrified? Does the future you envision make you feel happy and secure or does your future vision scare the wits out of you? Just being a rational person in this crazy world is enough to scare the toughest of us. There is no shame in fear. Most of us do fear the unknown and the future is jam-packed full of the unknown. While we have no control over future events, we have power over how we deal with them. We have control over ourselves, more than some people believe.

What it takes is belief and the rest is easy.

I call it Magical Thinking and it is powerful.

It has changed me personally, profoundly. Where once I walked in darkness, I now sing proudly in the light. I have found magic in this simple thing, this simple belief.

But it is more than a belief, it is much more. It is a way of looking at the world. It gives you control over your own destiny because you have that control. The key is to conquer yourself. That, I believe is the hardest thing anyone can do.

I have spent much of my life in the shadows; shy, withdrawn, silent and lonely. My self-esteem hit rock bottom and my only solace lie in the cold unforgiving brown glass of a beer bottle. I had a dark night of the soul, well… quite a number of them. I looked at myself objectively for the first time and I couldn’t stand the sight of me. How had I fallen so low? More importantly, how do I crawl my way out? I had all the reason in the world because by then I had 2 small kids and they needed me.

I needed to be strong for them. For the first time in my life I had to be strong for someone else even when I couldn’t be strong for myself. I had no one to help me and so I began to help myself.

I started slow. I started to tell myself good things about me, even when I had to make things up. I would set up little challenges for myself and then I would literally pat me on the back for a job well done. I consumed the knowledge of a growing pile of books. I filled in some gaps and smoothed out my rough edges.

You are stronger than you think.

I convinced myself of my self-worth and I started to actually like me for the first time ever. The magical thinking continued. I finally quit a twenty year drinking habit. I became more confident and more capable all the while telling myself “Yes, you can.” The more and more I believed the stronger I became.

I started to meditate and through visualization I found that I had more control over my life than I ever thought possible. I found that often in life you get what you expect and positive thinking can go a long way. It is we who shape our future by what we are today. We are all connected and we influence each other enormously. A kind word or deed may come back to you in ways you’d never imagine.

It is magic and it is ready for the taking. All you need to do is believe. The more you practice it, the easier it gets and the more effective it becomes.

I believe that words can hold magic, the following words are a perfect example…..

“Your beliefs become your thoughts

Your thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your habits

Your habits become your values

Your values become your destiny.”

Mahatma Gandhi *******************

Have a magical day! Strawberryindigo.