He who does not start life will finish badly, one can tell. —Great Calendar of 1500, quote by…
—Philippe Aries—
As a species, we’re obsessed with the future. We spend time, energy, and money on horoscopes, almanacs, and sophisticated statistical “predictors,”
all of which, we think, will enable us to tell the future. But life, economics, and weather resist most of our efforts to control them. In the case of children, predictions are more complicated. If a child’s parents decides “this one’s going to be a loser,” that child has a lot of overcoming to do.
Can we escape the noose of a self-fulfilling prediction? Yes, probably, health, self-respect, and a balanced outlook are easier to achieve for us if we
have had loving nurturance and support in early life. But even if our early life has been filled with neglect or abuse, we can learn to love and nurture ourselves. And we can pass along the blessing by refusing to predict the future for others in ways that damage or confine them. All we really have is
the here and now. All we can control is our own behavior. When we surrender to these limits on our human power, we can begin to tap the sources of
a power greater than ourselves. I will surrender to the moment today.