Imagining the Future

Feels a little wonky to be admitting this in the midst of ongoing chaos and loss, but I’m feeling hopeful and enthusiastic these days. I’m waking up happy every morning, excited about cool stuff like the future. Seem nuts?  Bear with me.  

This year has been destructive.  Dismantled a lot of expectations and safety nets, imploded individual, national, and international identities.  Groundlessness, anxiety, and panic have been common responses. All of this is hell on our nervous systems, triggering our survival brains into a constant state of flight, flight or freeze.    

Sounds pretty bleak, I know.  But I have a message for overactive survival brains everywhere:  “Chill, dear.  We’re okay.  In fact.  We’re better than okay.  Good things are coming.” In fact, there’s a lot of proof that the difficulties of this year are setting us up not for more difficulty, but for serious post traumatic growth.  If you’ve never heard of post traumatic growth, check out this blog post by one of my favorite researchers, Scott Barry Kaufman.  

 I don’t believe in using positivity to avoid facts and feelings.  Yes, there are new threats out there.  Or at least threats we weren’t aware of before March of this year.  And yes, a lot of people are suffering through some really hard times.  Without denying that or any of the healing needed, I tell you: we can handle this.  We humans are smart and adaptable. To this end, find some ways to calm your survival brain down (for suggestions, see this recent blog post).  When your survival brain chills out, your thinking brain is free to come back on line and do it’s thing.  You’ll be wanting your thinking brain up and running for what comes next.  

One of the awesomest powers we have as humans is the power of imagination.  If you don’t believe me, check out the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.  Jawns don’t get more legit than U of P institutions.  According to one theory explained in this TED-ed video, the imagination needs the thinking brain to coordinate the astounding amount of info stored in our brains into feats of creation, invention and problem-solving.  With our thinking brain at the helm we can take the bits and pieces of what we know and experience and reorganize and expand them into something unbefore seen.  Like, say, a better world.

If we calm our survival brains down and let our thinking brains collaborate with our imaginations, we have the power to create anything. So let’s make it good.  Some might call our current situation a crossroads, but I think it’s more than that.  It’s a point of potentiality.  Like at the end of Back to the Future when the wheels of the Delorean disappear and Doc says, “Roads?  Where we’re going we don’t need roads!”  That’s where we are--wheels up, heading into a future that belongs entirely to our imaginations. 

Indulge this wild moment and your powers of creation.  Imagine a life and a world that makes you excited to get out of bed and welcome 2021 and everything that comes after. And then, let’s work together and git er done.