What Drives The Vision the Future Offers

It's been more than two months since my last entry. The insanity of life in transition took over, and I have not been able to focus my thinking into any sort of poignant commentary on the present social life of the inhabitants of planet Earth- nor to extend the purview of my will to include the future as it presents itself today. I also lost the content of my last entry because I didn't save it, which was a blunt dagger driven into my solar plexus. Not nearly fatal, but enough to leave the alveoli unable to draw oxygen for a short time. A portion of my creativity and willed thought driven out prematurely and lost into vapors. I am newly inspired, however, in part by a documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre called "The Defiant Ones." It's made me think of passion, drive, motivation, dedication, success. In an attempt to look to the past to see what the future holds, to see the impulses streaming toward my younger self out of the dark chasm of the unknown, I am wondering what dreams I had as a young person- to see where that led me and to see if there is more I can or should be doing to honor that which illuminated the daily meanderings of my imagination and nighttime wanderings and fantasies. I sincerely thought I was going to be a professional athlete for much of my childhood- that is the predominant dream of my youth. For a period from reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in ninth grade until I failed out of college four years later, I wanted to be a lawyer like Atticus Finch, defending the underserved, the unjustly persecuted of the world. A magician, a circus performer... I have always had the slightly debilitating gifts of being better than mediocre at many things, sincerely interested in nearly everything and secure and comfortable in home, family, surroundings and social life. These privileges have led me into and through many truly wonderful experiences and conversations and have hopefully led me to add some beauty and good to the world, but they failed to propel me blindly, bluntly, forcefully into a career, a vocation, a form of expression- a singular vision without which the world and I would not be viable or livable. It could be laziness or insecurity, but neither of those seem to fit. Creatively, when I dive back into my youth, the thing to which I was most attracted, perhaps showed some promise, was writing. As though drops of words dripped from the petal of a flower held by a future me reaching back in time to bestow wisdom. So I'm writing again. In hopes of honoring the gifts of the future, in hopes of honoring the deep past of previous lives in which I prepared for this short time on earth, in hopes of still bringing some light to this world as it contorts itself into shadow. The future is as unclear as it was two months ago, the notion of truth as vague, the social life of the country still trapped in a pre-boil ferment of antagonism and discomfort. It is a gift to be able to look back, to see a life unfolding, drawn taught by the future which is today and continues into tomorrow, pulled forth by an immense wisdom of which we are a part. The future we follow the future we are.