Future visioning

CAST LIST:

ME = the day-to-day me, the one who shops, works and pays her bills.

MYSELF = is that point of consciousness outside of me, my personality if you like, that takes a more objective view of my life.

I = my link with spirit which comes on the heels of meditation, or in the throes of a meditative state when I am on the computer.

(For more explanation read 'Me, myself and I' in this collection.)

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I: Close your eyes and imagine you are standing in a cold landscape. There is white all around you, snow and ice at your feet, but a warm sun on your face. You close your eyes and become aware of the sound of water in the distance and the slow grating sound as the ice breaks around and drops, with a shudder, into the sea.
It is familiar territory to you. You hear the sound of dogs and of birds in the distance and the sound of men crossing the icy plains. You can hear the movement of the Earth and the sound of whales as they swim in the distance. With your eyes closed you can hear the sound of the snow melting under your feet and the rivulets of melting snow falling down the rocks.
You feel safe and warm and peaceful.
But the landscape is changing, you try and imagine this same point when you were a child but it is impossible. You conjure up some images of higher mountains, less scrub on one side and more scrub on the other. More dogs, more bears, fewer lights in the distance. More stars ' a bigger moon.
Then you try and imagine the landscape of the future, in twenty years time when you will be old and unable to stand for long with your eyes closed. Somehow the immediate landscape seems bare, limitless but barren. You cannot pick out a familiar sight, everything seems to have faded. All that remains is in the distance a large bustling city, with bright lights, young busy people with their lives passing by as if you, and the wilderness just outside their city walls does not exist.
That is like trying to envisage the future. You hear the words, 'there will be change' and the tendency is to wipe out the familiar landmarks. To take a sweep across your life and create a barren wilderness around yourself in which the only activity that is certain is the activity of others far away, far too busy with their own lives to lend a helping hand.
True, the alternative which is to stay indoors, turn up the fire and the TV and carry on carrying on is no answer either. But there is a middle way.
Change is incremental, it is a series of small changes, usually of attitude of mind.
You mention the change in you after the London bombs.

MYSELF: I do have to come in here, how can you possibly call your reaction to the London bombs change? What about the relatives, the friends the deceased. Now that's change. Breathing deeply at the sight of a neglected rucksack doesn't even come close!

I: But responding differently to something familiar and overcoming little stabs of fear, is change. It is not the monumental change of the people you mention, but it is change. It is lonely and uncertain change, but it is another step on the path towards living your life differently.

ME: So is that the kind of change you are talking about? Doing the same things differently?

I: You have to come to a point in your life when you have to decide why you continue to do what you are doing, and what it is costing you, and the planet, to support this activity. When ambition has faded, and the ocean, that is an organisation, has flowed over the gap that you left in the sand when you left your position what is it that, in the long winter months of old age, you want to feel proud of?

You are too old now to have parents to say 'I am proud of you' and so that leaves me, myself and I to consider those questions late into life, when the eyes go dim and the limbs go stiff.

ME: I have never thought of feeling proud of myself, I have always thought about being true to myself. But that seems to be an under-rated virtue these days.
I: I guess that depends where your boundaries lie. If you believe in the continuation of the soul and in lifetimes of learning. then the over-rated virtues of ambition and wealth might not seem such a worthy accolade when you are reviewing your footprint on the planet.

ME: That brings me on to the subject of belief¦. But its late and today's distractions have been exquisitely layered with distractions, shards of contemplation, more distraction and activity designed to quiet the brain. Why is it that only TV quiets the brain?