What is the future and what is the past?

In the past we did things, we learnt things, created ideas, and ideologies; we formed society, and walked blindly forward until we reach the present, now. The past is a memory, and not a good memory at that, the past is something gone, something we should always learn from but never hold against ourselves. The past is the past, never forgotten, but never to dwell on, unless for educational gain. The past makes us, who we are, but when making us who we are, it was the present; the past is vague and confusing, thought provoking, yet unnerving. The past haunts all of us directly or indirectly, it can make us better or it can make us worse, it can divide and it can cement. The past cannot be proved or disproved, it is an anomaly, a version of events portrayed, outlined, venerated, maligned, the past is how we want it to be, it is blinkered, or it is elevated, held in the highest esteem, or reviled as pure evil. It is wrong or exaggerated, it is cruel and forgiving, it can destroy, and it can remake, it is an amazing wonder.


The future, is similar to the past, the future is the past brought forth and pushed into existence by the mind. The future is the recreation, the re-enactment, the self fulfilling side of an intelligent mind. No one can know the future yet the future is foreseen by using the past. I know this, because I am one of its worst offenders, the future never exists, it is always a fantasy played out by the ego and the mind. The future is a game, a game the mind feels it has to win, it has to know the future and so it makes damn sure, what it perceives as the future is close to the actual future. We can speculate about what will happen, and of course, everyone does all the time. We can pretend we know the future, but if we did actually use the part of the past that was the most important part, we would know that we are quite often wrong. The more you speculate about the future, and the further your speculation goes into that future, the likelihood is, the more wrong you will be.

Since the past is behind us and the future is always unknown, I say it is good to live in the moment, and as Eckhart Tolle would say, feel the power of now. And I am one big hypocrite for saying all this, because if I could find it as easy to do it, as it is to write, then I would be a better man.