There is no future

Heard some high school kids today as they walked to the subway, discussing their future and disdaining their present.  Summary?  The future will be perfect.  The present is only an annoyance to be gotten through.

Is this what school teaches kids?

It’s ok – study hard & don’t worry if you hate your life now.  Everything will be fine in the future!

It’s not just in school, though I think that is where this type of thought process begins and then everything else in our culture reinforces it.   Look to the future and forget the now.

The problem is that the future never gets here.  It is always out there somewhere, just out of our reach.

All we have is the now.

When people ask me if my kids are learning what they need to know, what they really mean is are they being prepared for the future.  Obviously my kids know everything they need to know right now, and if they don’t then they know where to look to find it.  Which in my mind means they are well prepared for the future.  Because they live in the now.   Of course they look forward to things that will happen in the future, but they are concrete things like trips or special events; not some undefined future time when they will finally be happy & successful.  They are happy and successful now.

I don’t think I can ask for more than that.

 

 

One comment on “There is no future

  1. Miriam says:

    Even in the Bible it says to “take no thought for the morrow”. Sometimes more difficult than it sounds.

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