1-6-19
“The future is a concept—it doesn’t exist There is no such thing as tomorrow There never will be because time is always now. That’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.” -Alan Watts
Many of us spend so much of our time worrying about the future and dreading mistakes from the past. Neither one of these are things we can change or impact, all we have is the present moment to make the most of our time here. Submitting to the reality that our power is limited, and our breadth of control does not exist much beyond superficial details, we can allow ourselves to find some freedom in this submission.
I, like many others, grew up on cartoons like “The Jetsons,” reading comic books like the “Rocketeer,” and I envisioned a brighter future…you know the one where everyone can zip around in flying cars. We’ve still created technology beyond our wildest dreams, and yet the brightness, which the future once represented, seems to have turned bleaker. Instead of jetpacks, we’ve traded our talents for instantaneous knowledge and information receptacles, (i.e., computers and all the “smart” products.) I’m not judging, just pointing out what we all know.
This song is on the more depressing side, and at the same time I’ve always heard an act of submission within its lyrics: There’s no such thing as the future | Now’s the only time we got | And even that won’t last much longer | If we make the most of it | We might not need any more. Taking from what I see it as, “this isn’t what we thought it would be, we can’t do much about it, best to make the most out of what we got,” and if that isn’t submission, I don’t know what is.
There’s little that I personally can do about the negative impacts that our current systems inflict and have inflicted. This thought has made me ambivalent at times, it makes me want to forgo ever trying, and staying quiet because it’s easier to not say or do anything. But I don’t see it as an “all or nothing” concept. There are the macro-systems that we as individuals have little to no direct influence in changing; these are the points where submission can become a benefit. When we stop trying to change that which we cannot change, we can instead focus our energies on that which we can improve.
Lyrics:
There’s no such thing as the future
It’s all dials and lofty dreams
Calendars and TV screens
There’s no such thing as heroes
Just a bunch of ones and zeros
There’s no such thing as the future
Let science try to prove us wrong
And we’ll spend the extra effort
Making plans and doing things
That actually concern us
There’s no such thing as the future
As it’s been found out and destroyed
Now it’s nothing more than memories
Watch the airplanes overhead
As they go flying ’round in circles
There’s no such thing as the future (now, now, now)
And now’s the only time we got
And even that won’t last much longer
If we make the most of it
We may not need any more
So, let’s not waste our time
Quit stealing all my lines
There’s no such thing as the future
Now’s the only time we got
And even that won’t last much longer
If we make the most of it
We might not need any more
There’s no such thing as the future (now, now, now)
There’s no such thing as the future (now, now, now)
There’s no such thing as the future
No such thing as the future
There’s no such thing as the future
There’s no such thing as the future