Thursday, December 04, 2008

The Audacity of Hope - the Future approaches...

I hope Pres. Elect Obama pardons my outright theft of the title to his book but I feel it is apropos for this entry.

The future is coming. The future is always coming. It never arrives. The future is always a promise, a gift yet to give, a dream that still lingers in sleep.

The present is momentary. It arrives, smacks us on the forehead then leaves. It lights up before us like the bright flash of a snapshot. After the flash, the present no longer exists.

The past is everything. The past is who we are; which is to say who we were. We live in the past, rely on the past, make all of our choices based on what has happened before. When I say that humanity is history, I mean it quite literally.

The last eight years of our history have been, to say the least, some of the most tumultuous years in American history. One could find times in history that were more violent, more disastrous, perhaps even more tragic but given the level of global awareness and the vast amount of information, good or bad, current situations give these times a more drastic and severe immediacy. More people have an active part in this global awareness; more people are participating than before.

We need to look at this new chapter of our past as an opportunity. Everything we are, everything we expect to get from the future will depend on what we do now. We need to control the flash of the present by shaping what the promise will bring. This will give us the prescience to correct the mistakes made by the fools our countrymen put into power at the dawn of this century.

Our collective past will depend on the choices we make in this present.

David A.
So Mote It Be

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