The future is unpredictable, and the sensation of it has never had so many dimensions. We've all experienced the anxiety that comes with waiting for the results of a test score, an application to a desired career or school, a bill of good health from a doctor, or the results of a competition. Whether unexpected or anticipated, events in our day-to-day lives carry a thread of inevitability to their outcomes and, for the most part, whatever may lay beyond the horizon, we know that there is an end.
This time, however, there is a dense fog that obscures our senses. Not only is it difficult to find the light in this void filled with all of the things that consume our lives but there is a haze of confusion that impairs our ability to predict how these things may conclude. The safety net of certainty that guarantees something attainable at the end, favorable outcome or not, is lost. We're not just in a place of uncertainty; we are in a new state of existence where predictability has become unstable.
Our depth perception is failing us. Every moment and every decision taken by those in power over society today has crippled the foundations of information. As the dominos fall, the stability within our life drifts in a vast, unresolved space where every possibility exists and yet none are granted. From the crow’s nest, where the highest view that grants the widest range of visibility, there is no shoreline found and therefore, we remain dead in the water - anchored in place.
The compass that once morally guided us has lost its golden needle. The things we always knew that slowed progress for society or created a disadvantage to humanity are the things in which we bear witness to now. In past times, even amid crisis, there was an underlying sense that time would deliver a conclusive answer, however, the present feels stretched endlessly, as if pulled into the event horizon of a blackhole. We watch helplessly as the present remains frozen relative to our perception while we are left wondering what the future holds.
From here, how do we navigate when we cannot see, with a compass that has no needle, and a future that exists outside of time? We persist.
Together.