What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?
The Future We Will Never See
There are mornings
when I stand near small unfinished things—
a cracked bucket catching rainwater,
paint peeling from balcony rails,
the stubborn basil plant leaning toward traffic noise—
and think about the future
the way people think about distant countries:
real enough to believe in,
too far to touch.
I want to know
what cities become
after the cranes disappear.
I want to know
if rivers remember
the names we gave them.
Also, I want to know
whether children not yet imagined
will laugh at our fears
the way we laugh
at maps drawn centuries ago.
Mostly,
I want to see
the future we will never see.
Not because my life is small.
Because my wanting is large.
There are too many unfinished questions
stacked inside one human lifespan.
Will deserts bloom differently?
Will coastlines redraw themselves
with patient violence?
And, Will languages merge
like rivers after rain?
Will machines learn tenderness
or only imitation?
Will loneliness become obsolete,
or industrial?
The ceiling fan circles.
Tea cools.
Outside, a delivery rider waits
through another red light.
Life continues
with astonishing indifference
to philosophical emergencies.
This may be the first lesson.
That mortality reflection
does not arrive dramatically.
It arrives while folding laundry.
While searching for missing receipts.
While checking whether
the water tank filled overnight.
In fact, While watching your hands
begin, slowly,
to resemble your parents’ hands.
We Imagine Time
As children,
we imagine time
as a staircase.
Upward.
Endless.
We do not understand
that time is also weather.
It moves through us.
Leaves marks.
Fades curtains.
Softens photographs.
Carries away entire versions
of ourselves.
I once believed
human legacy
meant monuments.
Statues.
Books.
Names engraved into stone.
Now I think legacy
may be smaller.
Maybe it is teaching someone
how to repair a leaking tap.
Maybe it is watering plants
in buildings you do not own.
And, Maybe it is returning shopping carts.
Calling people back.
Leaving instructions.
Planting shade.
The world survives
through quiet maintenance.
Not applause.
Some nights,
I imagine future generations
walking through places I know.
A child stepping over pavement
outside a market
that has not yet closed.
Someone standing on a metro platform
where advertisements have changed
but impatience remains.
Someone touching walls
built by workers
whose names dissolved
before concrete dried.
Civilization is strange.
Almost everything important
was made by people
who never saw the ending.
Cathedral builders.
Seed savers.
Bridge engineers.
Grandparents.
They labored
inside partial knowledge.
They offered years
to outcomes
they would never verify.
And somehow,
the world advanced.
Not elegantly.
Not fairly.
But forward.
The Future Already Exists
The future we will never see
already exists
inside tiny rehearsals.
In compost bins.
In library cards.
Or, In repaired shoes.
In choosing slower words
during arguments.
In teaching curiosity
instead of certainty.
Sometimes grief appears here.
Not loud grief.
A softer variety.
The grief of missing out.
I will not know
which species survive.
I will not know
what medicine discovers.
And, I will not know
whether humanity matures
or merely upgrades its distractions.
I will miss
new music.
New skies.
New mistakes.
There is sadness
in understanding
that history continues
without requesting permission.
Even mountains know this.
Look long enough
at stone
and you realize permanence
is advertising.
Glaciers retreat.
Cliffs collapse.
Stars exhaust themselves
quietly.
Entire forests migrate
without apology.
Why should humans
be exceptions?
The wind enters
through an unsealed window.
A page moves.
Dust rearranges itself.
Another lesson.
Continuity rarely announces itself.
It accumulates.
A seed becomes roots.
Roots become shade.
Shade becomes memory.
Memory becomes story.
Story becomes action.
Action becomes conditions
for strangers.
Perhaps this is enough.
Perhaps mindfulness poetry
is not about slowing time.
And, Perhaps it is about noticing
that time was never ours.
Between Birth and Forgetting
Only borrowed.
Only carried briefly
between birth and forgetting.
I think often
about old trees.
How someone placed them
into soil
while knowing
they would never sit beneath
their widest branches.
What confidence.
What surrender.
To invest in weather
you will not experience.
To believe
that anonymous people
deserve comfort.
Maybe wisdom
is simply this:
to stop confusing witnessing
with participation.
You do not need
to watch the harvest
to justify planting.
You do not need
to meet the beneficiaries
of kindness.
You do not need
to stand inside tomorrow
to influence it.
Even now,
while reading these words,
somewhere—
someone repairs a bridge.
Someone teaches fractions.
And, Someone saves seeds
inside labeled jars.
Someone stays awake
with a sick child.
Someone refuses cruelty.
And, Someone begins again.
The species survives
through repetitions
of care.
Not certainty.
Morning returns.
Pigeons occupy electric wires
with unnecessary confidence.
Sunlight reaches
the chipped balcony rail.
The basil plant survives another day.
And I understand something
small
but sufficient.
The future we will never see
was never withholding itself.
We were simply expecting
an invitation.
There is none.
Only participation.
Only contribution.
And, Only this brief chance
to leave conditions
slightly gentler
than we found them.
So I will continue.
Filling bottles.
Answering messages.
Planting things.
Learning names.
Repairing what breaks.
Offering shade.
And when my part ends,
the river will continue.
The trains will continue.
Children not yet born
will inherit weather
and language
and unfinished problems.
They will build strange solutions.
They will fail differently.
And, They will love under skies
we cannot imagine.
And somewhere inside that distance,
without witness,
without applause,
or, without arrival—
a small part of us
will still be moving forward.
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