Language and Future

Words. Choice of words. Phrasing those words. Stating an idea. Allowing the idea to expand, reach out. To say something that is important. To say something unsaid before? Searching for something. Peering out from a safe point to one less certain? What is it?

Maybe the future? If we let it, perhaps a leap into the future? But we hold back. We don’t know that terrain; less comfortable of it. Nervous and twitchy. Standoffish. But it beckons, for some reason it pulls at us. What is it saying to us? Why are we interested?

Maybe to see the future? To get a glimpse of something new or strange? The carnival sideshow attraction?

Or maybe this is normal. Routine. We look forward to the new, the untried, the possible. Don’t know what it will mean yet; just that potential exists. Maybe useless; maybe not. What can I make of it?

Perhaps it is not safe to look upon it? Might it be of harm? Should we take caution? Build walls of protection. Already I’m feeling negative, down, snuffled out of reach. Shut off or shut down. Protected yet also inert, disenfranchised. Disconnected.

The struggle between possible and impossible; or the tension between the new and the old. Something to build or something to protect? And why protect it? What interest is served? Who? How? Why? 

One position on, the other off. Plus and minus. Equilibrium? Balance? Or stasis?

Sleeping. Fear of change. Hypersleep. Balance so true that nothing changes. Fixed in place.

There are those in our world who fear change. There are those who feed on change, want it, yearn for it, seek it tirelessly. They innovate. They invent. For what purpose only they know at first; later others will find purpose and put it to use. Yet the fruitful are those who bring us change or the need of change, or the hope that change will happen.

Those who fear change will hold us back. They will act as ‘governors’ of our rate of change. They will caution us to be cautious so as not to break the irreplaceable, or lose the gem. Or give up our principles, our morals, or core values.

There is a service in the fearful crowd. They help us think upon what we are doing. What we are attempting to change. And the purposes that change will serve. They keep us from getting lost in our journey to the future.

Yet there are limits. The seekers need some limits. The protectors need limits as well. Else neither will have usefulness. Perfect equilibrium is stasis. Checkmate. Zero. Nada.

I seek the future because it is there we can experience the hope of finding the new, the better, and the solutions to those problems we have brought with us on this journey. I prefer to think expansively. It is freedom to me.

I respect the protectors. But somewhere, sometime, we all must ask: “What are we protecting? Are we sure it is worth what we think it is?”

The yin and yang of history. What is right and what is wrong. Who are you and who am I? What should we do, and why not? Is ‘liberal’ seeking? Is ‘conservative’ protector? Is ‘centrist’ a better place?

Is this political always? Or pragmatic?

Questions to ponder. There is a dark side here; but where? And what is the danger? To do too much or not enough? Ponder.

March 11, 2012