As a child, the first day of the summer vacation can be a moment filled with promises and yes, future. The period of freedom has just begun and the fall is distant and blurry. Then, one brilliant sunny summer day you wake up with a strange feeling, realising that the vacation is half over. Suddenly, time seems constrained even though there is so much left of the summer. It becomes ever more important to do all the things we planned, jump a hundred times from the dock, swim to island, climb the highest tree; all to fill our whole body and soul with memories.
As we age, the future both slides away and come creeping closer. We make plans, for education, career, family, children. We buy a house and anticipate that we will live there happily ever after. "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades....".And yet, as time passes, things happen, the path of life changes and we understand that bit by bit, there is less left of our future. It's not really a question of age, because age is very relative, the young may be old and the old young at heart. But it is a question of time. There just will not be enough time for everything so we will have to make choices. Sometimes tough choices.
But apart from our individual futures, we also have our collective future, the path of my group, my organisation, my country. Often the future in this respect means growth, expansion of possibilites, more to come. Companies plan for conquering new markets, regions want to become the top growth areas of the country, countries want to become the number one economy. Full speed ahead.
So why do I claim that the future is not what it used to be? Because as the reality of climate change and other planetary boundaries that we are now crossing kicks in, we now enter an era of restrictions, if we are to sustain a reasonably stable and liveable planet, a resilient environment for humanity. If we do start to limit our behaviour to respect the planetary boundaries, it will still be hard for we as humans do not like being restricted or boxed in. But if we fail to understand the writing on the wall, we risk a very rude awakening.
Given this bleak view of the future, do I see hope as a reasonable attitude or feeling? Yes, as this message states, there is hope.
I found this inscription one evening while walking along the river Seine i Pars. It was in my mind as I sat down outside the Notre Dame cathedral. Although I myself do not believe in god, I can still admire and be inspired by the beauty and serenity of this building.
And thus an insight struck me, as I was sitting there, watching visitors eager to tip of a visit to Notre Dame on their Paris To Do-list. At the time the cathedral was being built, the architect as well as the building master and his men must have known that they would never see the completion of their work. The would not, as we phrase it today, get the credit for their work. Yet they started on their task, in full realisation that they would not be the ones to collect the praise for finalising this marvel of architecture.
A distant friend of min, not in mindset but in geography, wrote to me about hope and positivism after one of my previous posts. He asked me the keep my spirits up, since he saw me as a person who inspired him. I was greatly moved by his statement. So maybe we can in a similar way shoulder the great tasks that lay before us by taking the long term approach of the Notre Dame architects. So it is my belief, that we should keep our hope, because if we work together for the long term future, the landing will not be soft but less hard than feared. It will be a long road. We will have to take actions, the benefits of which we might not see in our lifetimes. Still, it is time to get started.
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