I facilitate a writer’s group with the Stratford Arts Alliance that meets every second Saturday of the month. In April one of the prompts was to “imagine what it would be like if you could peek into the future.” My ramblings are below:
I don’t want to look, I’m afraid of what’s out there
In the land past this moment, past the unpredictable unfolding of events in every newly emerging unit of time.
If I became certain, got to look behind the curtain, I’d hold fast to specific outcomes and forget to wonder, forget to find freedom in mystery and forget the joy of watching events unfurl before me in a way that is both haphazard and synchronistic at the same time.
I’d miss the way life weaves chaos and catastrophe into majesty and miracle. It would be spoiled like when you watch a behind the scenes special on the making of your favorite movie and now all you see when you watch the movie is where the wires and the green screen and the cameras are. The illusion is lost because you got to peek inside.
I’d start to become delusional if you showed me my future,
Thinking I deserve exactly that one, and if it’s a bad one then I am bad, right?
And if it’s a good one, but just one of many probables then I suddenly have something to measure up to, to be responsible for, to try and attain or achieve, but I’ve got nothing up my sleeve
So I’d rather not know. I’d rather not see
I’d rather live in the quicksand of uncertainty
Because even if I’m sinking, or overthinking, or flinching and blinking
I’m living here now in the present moment, where I can see the universe winking
And suddenly I notice that vine to grab onto that had been there all the time, or mercifully fallen just when I let go of any idea that things could be any different.
I surrender to the sinking feeling in the present moment
Don’t run away from my dread, or my pounding head
And feel the entire uncomfortable truth of every single one of my feelings and failings
That I know leads me to healings and prevailings,
But I don’t know what, or when or how, and I think I like it like that.
Don’t let me peek at my unknown future, I like the unknown quality and don’t want that blown to smithereens by some glimpse at some version of what could possibly happen.
I’d rather not live that way, so I can truly say I’d prefer to live wondering, and let come what may.
