Image by Toby Parsons from Pixabay:  https://pixabay.com/photos/passing-place-sign-place-pass-2975664/

We speak of the future as if we know what we mean; most often envisioning a place where events wait until they “come to pass”. That entails passing through the present and quickly disappearing into the past. Appearance in the present is so brief that we might as well say that the future is where events wait until they “come to the past”.

About such a future, we also say that whatever comes into the present as the consequence of past actions will join those causes in our memory, where we will be unable to affect either those causes or their consequences.

We usually think of ourselves as standing between a future where everything that has not yet happened resides and a past where everything that has already taken place has been assigned its place in memory. That past—where fleeting moments go to join earlier fleeting moments—provides a narrative for our lifetime. Such a past seems little more than a warehouse for remembered moments; while moments that we don’t remember are stored off-line in the cache of our Unconscious.

This picture of an inaccessible future can inspire us to look for another kind of future with which we can have a more intimate relationship. We know that a future that only doles out fragmentary moments of experience isn’t really how our lives in time unfold and evolve. Yet most of us are only occasionally aware of the dynamic flow that feeds our consciousness and makes our presence in this living world possible.

It seems a case of mistaken identity to call both the living present and a future that races by only to be interred in the past by the same name. It seems an unnecessary limitation on our understanding to use the same word to describe both a region of time that never shows its face and the living current that runs through our lives, like the Rio Grande runs through New Mexico, bringing the waters of life to cotton wood trees and chili plants.

So, what are some names for this other kind of time? Here are a few: hope and dreams; gratitude, appreciation and love; faith, aspiration and intention; the life of everything we care about. These names for the future all share a quality of consciousness and caring that is not present in the kind of future where possibilities have no face until they appear in the present on their way to a past where visitors can only wave through the bars and put a hand on their hearts.

A question arises. Does a future that is embedded in a kind of time where past, present, and future are lined up like a food line dispensing one scoop of soup after another have any connection with a future that is envisioned as the home of hope and dynamic interconnections?

Is there any common ground between a future that slips by noticed into the past and a future that inspires our participation in life? Both kinds of future can surprise us. Both can nurture us. Both arrive from somewhere we can’t pinpoint on any map.

We can ask what, if anything, is different about a kind of future that is not embedded in the familiar past/present/future structure of sequential time?

Are we free to embark on fresh ways of engaging the potential of being born a human being? Are we free to peer over the horizon of our familiar expectations and known identities, to appreciate the wind blowing in from unknown lands and seas? Or are we inherently bound to a linear time in which each moment is determined by past moments and we can only hope for a little more time to be dispensed from a future that only communicates with us one moment after another?

Even if we can’t completely escape the framework of linear time, which allows us to organize our lives, we can let all those moments be like waves on the broad back of a sea that is carrying us along and keeping us afloat. In this other kind of time, which is more like the ocean than the trickle of water from a faucet, we are free to set sail into an open future. We don’t need to wait for our ticket to be stamped at a turnstile that leads to the same train we took yesterday.