It can be difficult to see months into the future, let alone years or decades. How do you see what lies ahead?
Reality serves us a constant reminder that we don’t know what is going to happen. At the start of the football season, we don’t know who is going to win the Super Bowl. We can’t predict the weather more than a week in advance. People who invest in the stock market can only hope a particular stock will go up in price.
And yet, despite all the evidence that shows we cannot accurately predict the future, some people seem awfully sure about what will happen next. News pundits, op-ed columnists, and politicians all seem certain they know exactly what will happen. Not to mention psychics and tarot card readers.
With that in mind, how do you think about what tomorrow will bring?
Perhaps you view the future with optimism. Tomorrow, you might expect, will be better than today. But, of course, there is no guarantee that this is true.
Or you might think that instead, we can expect the future to be very much like the present (or the past). After all, the sun rose yesterday, it rose this morning, and it will rise tomorrow. But we know that sometimes there are changes, including big ones. The COVID-19 pandemic caught nearly everyone by surprise, and that was an obvious case where the future (say, April 2020) didn’t resemble the past (February 2020).
When you think about the future, how do you make predictions, and how do you react to those predictions? What does that mean for your present?
Related questions: Should we try to predict the future? How much does your past determine your future? Will the future be better than the present? How do you plan for the future?