Be a Futurist

A few years ago, I was at a pivotal point in my life where I had a lot of decisions to make.

I was in an office board room in Atlanta, Georgia with some possible future partners that would expand our vision and bring in new opportunities. I looked up and saw printed on the wall in big bold script the words, “The Future is NOW!” it really struck my heart and caused my spirit to leap.

I felt it right then, that what we live in this fleeting moment in the present, becomes the architecture of our future.

The present moment is the only true reality so we need the ability to make the present moment count for something and to build infrastructure for our future.

We have to think of our future often.

We have to dream. We have to visualize it in detail.

We must contend for a future that hasn’t even arrived yet. This visualization of your best future and the best future for our world will inform your present decisions. It will make your moments in the present stack into the framework that will form your future.

Conversely, spending time in the past will hold you back and make your present moments stall out or just be ephemeral little wisps that dissipate into nothing and don’t live on into building a future.

The past is only our teacher, but is not designed to grip us and make us relive it.

We can become captured by our past through unforgiveness, past betrayal, wounds, mistakes, failures or even past successes. Some can look into the past and wish for things to return. In order to be effective in our present, we have to let go of the past. We must release it and be disciplined to look forward and not backward.

The futurists will be the ones who create, imagine and build the future.

• This is why your art will bring the far things near.
• This is why you are a prophet.
• This is why our art matters and what terrifies the controllers.
• This is why there has been such an intense battle over the art world and over artists.

Our greatest weapon to create an incredible future is to let go of the past and dare to spend time imagining the future. See what it will look like. See the animals and the restored earth. See the love abounding in families. Visualize the free and unified people.

Picture it. Picture the dancing, the laughter, the color, the light.

Artists are inherently and intrinsically futurists. We create in the instant present moment what is future and not yet seen.