FUTURE PERFECT : Time Flies When Tomorrow Promises to Be a Better Day

Huh? Did someone say Christmas?

I can’t believe the holidays are here--again. Already! It seems that just a January ago I was surveying the months ahead, savoring all the zillion things I was finally going to do, especially those nagging holdovers from last year and the year before. Now this year’s end is imminent, the beginning of next year impending. In spite of living my life at full hamster, few of my urgent missions were accomplished.

Never lost those 40 pounds.

Never made that trip to Laughlin.

Hardly a dent in that mounting stack of a hundred-odd bestsellers I was going to read, cover to cover.

“I’ll get to these later” is my self-hypnotic chant whenever my ill-balanced stack of neglected correspondence, 3 1/2 feet high, is periodically knocked over, spewing motes. Unfiled clippings, manuscripts and low-calorie recipes wither and yellow in the dark crevice under the desk-side table.

Light stuff is easy burden, but I bend under the weight of the heavies--friends, relations, beloved ones not seen enough of . . . the unwritten, the unsaid, the undelivered . . . the wonderful moments that never happened except in my well-intentioned, overcommitted imagination.

My mood becomes pensive and introspective as I zombie through the shopping, phone calls, dinner dates and other seasonal rituals and obligations, trapped between confusion and dismay. An acute awareness sets in. I feel the axial spin of Earth as it moves relentlessly forward. It’s winter and my thoughts are preoccupied with the days to come. . . .

The future is endless comfort at the terminal of sacrifice and hard work. There must be a time when everything will be better, well-organized and spanking. Or is it simply that what’s possible makes the inevitable palatable?

Funny--there are no mysteries in the future. Everything is known there. Cures will be found for the incurable. Wars will cease and doomsday weapons will be shelved.

There will be plenty of time to revel in the arts and travel the world. Urban homelessness will be a sociological curiosity of the late 20th Century. There will be enough of everything for everyone--the cultural-economic cornucopia will vanquish the poverty of heart, mind and spirit.

There are no civil evils in the future. There will be no traffic jams and no traffic accidents. The criminal justice system will be eradicated because there will be no crime. Society will embrace and nourish the different, the disabled, the dissident. The cantankerous old and the rebellious young will bury their contentiousness in mutual respect.

The future is the great motivator. It inspires the faithful and fuels the determined. Sometimes the future is so dense that it seems to crush the present, suffocating the psyche. At other times, it’s buoyant, uplifting, and itmakes the here-and-now tolerable. The future is the smile of a child, the kiss of a lover, the hand taken in a brief parting or a lasting one. Too frequently it’s the only thing lived for. It’s the domain of fancy and fantasy, where recollections of those who have remained in the past are cherished.

It’s hard not to look forward to the future even if it never comes, despite meticulous planning. The present confirms and the past guarantees that every living thing will somehow in some way contribute to it.

Tomorrow, nothing goes to waste.

Tomorrow, the pains of the present are past. It is where the truth lives revealed, untarnished and celebrated.

The future is a home built of memory, one to grow up and grow old in--where lives are rich in unblemished love, perfect expectations are reared and death is an openness to all that is possible. It is, and always will be, the only place that’s absolutely safe. And it will get me through these holidays, as it usually does.