The 2018 is behind us: this is the future
It is true the title is provocative. We all know that 2018 is going to start, but none of us can predict the future.
For the future I have a pragmatic position that derives from the reading of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig.
In the book it is explained that we could use the metaphor of a motorcycle trip to represent the time.
The driver of the motorcycle driving (through time) looking back and sees the past scroll.
The motorcycle is directed towards the future. The future is behind us because none of us is able to see it. The best ones are able to imagine the best in the future on the basis of experience and interpretation of reality (the present).
The future is approaching towards us, or rather, we drive towards him, but we can only look at the past and live the present.
So I guess 2018 just as I imagined 2017 and other years of my professional and personal activities.
When in my public interventions explain this metaphor many seem to be disoriented and many criticize me saying that my view is pessimistic.
In fact I am an incurable optimist. Who sees the world and time as they are in reality, is a realist.
To “face” the future you can only do your best in this and try to plan it better. Planning, intelligence and organization are some of the tools we have available to handle the unknown future behind us.
To represent the future in front of us, believing to see it is a falsehood. We can only “envision” the future, we can not see it. “The future in front of us”: a falsehood iconography, linguistic, metaphorical that also involves our lives.
Then we head towards 2018, but the only thing we can do is watch the 2017 and all other years that we have lived.
Obviously the years further back in time we tend to forget (disappear in the skyline) more easily while the recent years we remember (see) them better. Regarding the past years we remember the most important events (“background”).
Living with the future behind it means to live in line with the direction of time. This rule is now impassable.
The future is behind us!
