Into the Future
No one knows what is going to happen in the future. But living day to day in the present and taking whatever the future has to offer are no longer acceptable. We buy insurance to guard against the unexpected happenings – sickness, traffic accident, fire, earthquake, etc. We work hard and save all we can in the present in anticipating that we will live a long life into the future. We keep track of the population growth so that we can provide the energy, food, infrastructure, and other necessities to engage people to work for their life rather than to fight for survival in the future. By understanding why things happen in the past, analyzing what is happening in the present, we can predict what will happen with greater accuracy. Earthquake, hurricane, drought, etc. are no longer considered punishments to humans’ bad deeds but can now be predicted by scientific instruments. With deeper knowledge of nutrition and medicine, average Joe can expect to live a long and healthy life into the future.
The Past
The past represents events that had happened and can no longer be changed:
-
When, how, and where we were born,
-
The mistakes that we made,
-
The Great Depression that ruined the lives of millions of people,
-
The invention of light bulb that turns night into day and day into non-stop 24 hours activities,
-
The 2 World Wars that terminated the lives of hundreds of millions of people prematurely,
-
The discovery of the New World that paved the emergence of the greatest nation on Earth, etc.
The only things that we can do are to understand how and why the events happened the ways they were and try to make things better in the present. The important events were recorded by the historians, studied and analyzed by the scholars. The past does not just represent what had occurred; it is also a search light that points the right path to take in the present.
The Present
What we are doing in the present depends a lot on what happened in the past:
-
After a painful illness/sickness, we learn to appreciate our health more and to modify our life style and priority accordingly,
-
After a stock market crash, we learn to diversify our investments and to look for safer and more stable returns,
-
After a devastating natural catastrophe, we learn to stock up on can food, water, flash light, and to reinforce the dwelling against wind, fire, and earthquake,
-
When we have a family to raise, we learn to live a less adventurous life style, to spend more energy to provide for and to be with the family, etc.
Along the way, our collective learning efforts have developed:
-
The automobile that enables us to work far away from home,
-
The airplane that enables us to do business globally,
-
The PC and Internet that enables us to communicate with one another instantly 24/7,
-
The medical technology that enables to live a longer and more active life, etc.
The present does not just represent what is going on; it lays the foundation to the path into the future.
The Future
By analyzing and understanding what, why, and how things happened in the past, we are able to take corrective actions in the present to plan for a better future and control what is going to happen:
-
To prevent the occurrence of another world war, we know that diplomacy and economic sanction can go only so far. An unchallengeable military power is the only solution to keep the fragile peace among the Have and the Have Not,
-
We develop the technologies to generate the clean and renewable energy from the Sun and wind rather from the coal and the fossil fuel that pollute the environment and leave toxic chemicals as byproducts,
-
We have never stopped exploring the inner (atom) as well as the outer (universe) spaces, because we instinctively know that that is where we are going to find the human race’s destiny, the true purpose and meaning of life.
It was not long ago that we were at the mercy of the unpredictable weather, the changing climate, the eruption of the volcano, the shaking of the earthquake, the destruction of the hurricane, etc. Today, we are getting close in forecasting the occurrence of those terrifying events and have developed contingency and emergency plans to handle the aftermaths. It was not long ago that we were in awe at all the living things around us with their diversity, complexity, and unique capability. It was not long ago that were intrigued by all the wonderful and unimaginable things that the human body can do. Today, we understand that all these are the result of an intelligent design and we are getting close to discover its source.
The Eternity
We are the only living things on Earth who understand the significance of time. We know the time not only of our birth but also of our Earth and of the Universe. We know that time started ticking after the Big Bang and thus, began its irreversible journey into the future when another event will commence its stoppage. Accordingly, the Universe also has a past, present, and future. As far as we know, everything in the Universe happens randomly in spontaneity but guided by the invisible physical laws which determine how things will eventually be. There is no exception to the rules on Earth. Each person has limited choices as to how to live one’s life and be who and what one is. Our civilization and world events are shaped by our cumulative intelligence and wisdom, Earth’s resources, and the condition of the Universe. In a human’s relatively short life span,
-
one can learn what had happened billions of years into the past,
-
one can experience moments of eternity in the present,
-
One can touch the future with one’s imagination.