I just watched an enjoyably witty and unpredictable movie targeted largely at teenagers called “Bandslam”. It is funny how the effect differs when you watch a movie that disrupts cliches. Generally speaking, of course, qualitative alterations are to the negative. Some consider it clever when the bad guy wins.
But here, it was all to the positive. Particularly if you have teenagers, I’d encourage you to watch it with your family. Some scenes may not be appropriate for kids under 13–I can’t remember–but older than that should be fine, at least in our day and age.
It got me to thinking, too. We live our lives in programmed ways. We watch movies, hundreds of them, in which the details vary only slightly within templates that are virtually indestructible. Our work is routinized. Most of us could drive to work in our sleep.
We tend, I think, to think of the future as having a track, of the present being on a line that is moving inexorably forward on that line. All that needs to be done to diagnose the future is a determination of the present. For Marx, all signs pointed to revolution. To Malthus and thousands of his followers today, to starvation. They tell us that we will all die if we don’t stop reproducing. To progressives, to further government control. For those worried about our debt, to financial chaos.
Yet, I would suggest the present is much more like a tornado, moving about unpredictably, going this way and that. Countless futures die in every moment, and countless more are born.
We do not live in lines: we live in the present. That is the only place we can ever be. And the best way to ensure a good future is to make our present the best it can be.
I’m a big fan of John Wooden, and he believed, with Cervantes, that the real enjoyment was in the doing, not the accomplishing, in the journey, and not the goal. His most enjoyable moments, if I’m reading him rightly, occurred daily, after well orchestrated and executed practices. He could see the future in his practice gym. That is where the games were won.
There was no golden past. Nothing was ever perfect, anywhere. If we had footage of our Founding Fathers arguing in the Continental Congress over everything, we would have doubted the possibility of the survival of our nation.
All we can do is look to today. Here is a poem I first read many years ago in Dale Carnegies excellent “How to stop worrying and start living”:
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!