One vital characteristic of the present is that it cannot fathom what invention or innovation the distant future will bring. Sure, it can imagine what new thing it would like to create or invent, based on the needs and gaps it sees today; but what startling new, and startlingly different, state or technology will rule reality long after it is gone, it cannot imagine now. Thus, it can not conceive at this moment the lens through which the future will look back at it, and appraise and critic or judge or justify it, one day, in a distant time, when the world has changed again.

Nor does it need to know. The present’s duty is to live proudly and thoroughly with a full chest. The more completely it gives and exhausts of itself, the more startling and magical and new the future will be which it shall one day birth. And whatever that future wants to think of it, let it do so. The most important thing, and all the present needs to know, is that it has honestly lived its best and fullest life to the utmost of its capabilities. This is the only tribute it owes to Reality and to the inexorable and unstoppable march of progress, change and development through eternal time.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Undulating Plains