"What?" I asked.
In a very calm and conversational voice he said: "I went to the doctor. He told me I have cancer and I'll be dead in six months."
Silence. Then I said: "Tell me you're kidding."
"No. But like I said," he went on, "everything's OK."
---
Whenever I've tried to predict "the" future, I got it wrong. (I put "the" in quotes because, what? There's only one future? Fnord!)
There's a thing called probability and it does most of the future-predicting work for us, even when we don't know the odds. For instance, the sun will probably rise tomorrow, for a number of reasons. I can't calculate the odds of it not rising, but based on past performance and lack of any data suggesting the sun is about to fizzle out, it seems pretty certain that it'll happen.
If you toss a non-rigged coin, the odds are almost 50-50 that one or the other side will land upright. Almost 50-50 because there's a chance, however slim, that the coin will land on edge. Toss two dice and it's certain you'll end up with a number between 2 and 12, and some of those numbers are much more likely to come up than others---and the odds are known, due to the simplicity of the task. There are only so many possible outcomes.
But when you get into stuff like: will my son become a doctor, or is my soulmate out there somewhere, or will tough Army men who are trained to face life and death fighting under very arduous conditions suddenly fall apart like hormonal teenie-boppers if they have to serve with gay people, things get tricky. There are simply too many variables. So who knows? Answer: nobody. Including you and me. So it doesn't pay to worry about it. See what happens.
I haven't spent too much time dwelling on the past, but I have a history of dwelling on possible futures. Lately, though, that's happening less and less. I'm trying to tone it down. Sure, I have plans---clean the garage, paint the spare bedroom, stuff like that. Can I predict the outcome of my goals? No. Too many variables, including possible incapacitation or death or a changing of the alleged mind on the part of your humble blogger.
The present moment seems more and more interesting to me. (I say "the" present moment even though I have the idea there's no such thing----it's like looking at the Danube and talking about "the" water droplet.) And watching time flow by, like watching a river, can be kind of interesting. Sometimes it's fun to just wait and see what happens. It's fun doing this with your creative endeavors, too---do them anonymously and then watch the fun.
Take a look at the young Austrian schoolgirl, above. Do you think she could have imagined all the interesting and wonderful things that later happened to her? She could imagine things just as fascinating----but how many of them came to pass? And how many of the things she experienced did she first imagine?
Nobody really knows, but when the photo above was taken I bet she never imagined she'd grow up to be dealing with a strange American who walks around half the time with smoke in his skull. Nor could the strange American imagine the grown-up Austrian schoolgirl until about, oh, seven years ago.
You just never know what a future will bring, but sometimes it's really fascinating and fun when it happens.
And then you need to savor the ever-moving moments.
