Dear Hivers,
If you didn’t know, the devotion series explores life, knowledge, and the truth around us. The last devotion series was published two months ago. We now continue.
In this article, we will explore the fantasy of the future.
Quick question: As humans, why do we look into the future? You see, last year I hired a freelancer to work on a project. He committed to this long-term.
And then in a week?
He quit.
Everything collapsed — those dreams and promises made during the interview were meaningless now.
I have personally seen dozens of writers come and go with dozens of promises created and broken. If you think about it? Life is built this way — people offer hopes and promises. And then walk away.
Think of those projects — plans — and even articles you planned to execute but never did. So even the ideas in our head that sounds perfect are left unfinished, isn’t it?
In fact, if you saw my blogs few years ago, you would discover hundreds of half-written articles that are now untouched. They are lifeless drafts with no hopes and directions. Not a single one is useful.
Everyone goes through this phase.
But when you put everything together, including your life experiences, you may begin to see a pattern. There is a psychological reason that forces us into the future. It has nothing to do with passion, culture, or background.
The fact is, all of us enjoy building a fantasy land around us. And then we make this land our private home.
The fantasy of the future always looks brighter than the reality of the present. That is why we start and never end.
As humans, we have divided time into three parts — the past, present, and the future. Past contains stories and events of our life. It cannot be changed.
Therefore we look into the future — which offers a ray of hope for a better tomorrow. It could be seeing your fav token going up 10x — or dream of a healthy body, new lifestyle, or extreme wealth.
Our present is often spent this way. In our present, we begin to daydream our future:
Therefore most of the ideas die before execution. You can take writing, for example. We start writing and then leave it half-way through. Even a book. Or a project.
We “start” for a reason. This start helps us swim into the future. We glorify the idea — magnify it — and then decorate it with our dreams. Therefore it drives us to take small actions — which is never enough.
Millions of people live this way. They walk into the fantasy land hoping and wishing for a change. And then those fantasies never change — they don’t even move an inch. If anything, they watch us grow old. The clock ticks as the gap between the reality and the fantasy widens.
Therefore several spiritual texts talk about living in the present — and actually working in the present. When you do that, you are not setting yourself any big future goals. All you do is commit.
You commit religiously to one task and then move onto the another.
To drive home this point, there is another process worth trying. Consider this an exercise. Indian priest Anthony De Mello once revealed two simple secrets about life. They are applicable even in our case:
- Step 1: Accept the mess.
- Step 2: Cure the mess.
The mess is the fantasy. Accepting this is important. Once we know we are fantasizing — we are now aware. Through this awareness we can stop our mind from diving into the future. We pull it back into the present.
The second step is to find a cure to this mess. Once you are in the reality, the best cures are:
- To finish what you promised.
- To work without expectations
- To change one day to day one
Simple yet profound, right? Something we know but often forget. So if I take writing an article as an example? Then the only goal is to finish the article. And once it is finished, we move onto the next article with no expectation of the previous one.
Such a life of no expectation leads to zero disappointment. It will, as you will notice, also lead to miracle — which is a by-product of living in the present.
With this, I hope and wish everyone is going to achieve everything in life by staying in the present — by starting and finishing now — eliminating expectations — while dropping the fantasy forever.
So that you can finish your dream work. Or complete that article you once planned to write. Just like I am dong it right now.
Cheers,
Sid
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