Take a glance at your future

​I'm not a big future guy. The future can easily distract me from today. I do, however, like to take frequent glances at my future.

I don't like to stare at it.

I don't stalk it.

But I do glance at it.

And I ask myself, what do you see there, Keith? Because my future hasn't happened yet, it's mine to imagine.

It's mine to create.

It's mine to use to measure today. It's mine to know if I'm any closer to where I'm going. It's mine to inform my next choice in life.

For much of my life I had no idea where I wanted to go. I'd open the window to my future and see chaos.

Or nothing at all.

Until eventually I just quit looking at the future. Not even a glance. When you quit glancing at the future your next choice becomes about surviving and not thriving.

It becomes about living without actually living.

Knowing where you're going doesn't make every choice easier. Or without pain. Sometimes choices are painful.

But when you know where you're going. When you glance at your future and you see it and you know my next choice is a requirement to get there, a painful choice becomes worth it.

Not painless, but worth it.

I think many of us have no idea where we are going. We see nothing when we glance. Or we see chaos.

We go on making painful choice after painful choice and that adds up to a painful existence. That pain isn't because of the choices but because we have no idea what we want those choices to add up to.

When we know we want our life to add up to 2, we pour 1 and 1 into our life. No matter how painful each of those ones are.

When we don't know what we want our life to add up to we just keep adding. And adding - burdens and pain and wondering what this is all about.

If that's you, I encourage you to take a glance at the future. It hasn't happened yet, so it IS yours to imagine. Yours to create.

Write it down. Draw it. Email it to a friend. Do something that says my glance at tomorrow is important enough to shape my today.

My tomorrow is important enough to battle through the pain of this day.

Then keep glancing. Keep battling. And go where you want to go.