Tu Sei Futuro / You Are Future.
The 3D phrase in front of the STEP Futurability District in Milan made my quick pace come to a pause under the burning afternoon sun. I internalised the statement and, silently, I repeated: “I Am Future”, “I Am Future”.
If ‘I am future’, then the future is already present. Every single moment, I deposit the potential of what I am becoming into my current anticipatory capacity. The future is not something that will happen to me: It is something I create in the present…So how does the freedom of writing my own present-future feel? What choices support my potential self in emerging? What intentions do I project into the future?
Earlier that day, during the Anticipation conference, I listened to Ivana Milojevic saying, “The way we think about the future has a past”. As humans we exist in a present shaped by our past, projecting ourselves in the future. How do I embody my values, hopes, fears, anxieties and assumptions? They are the raw material from which I build my reality. Do I question the cultural narratives I have endorsed, or do I repeat past assumptions while convincing myself they are mine and original? What paths of thought do I grant as safe to lead me? How shall I move forward unless I trace the origins of my own assumptions?
Imagining is a powerful way of thinking, and the future is an ongoing act of imagination and decision-making happening in the present moment. If I shift from ‘predicting and preparing’ to ‘learning and discovering’, I will use the future to expand my options today. Unless I recognise that my anticipations are shaped by yesterday’s stories; Unless I become aware that I have the authority to challenge my inherited assumptions; Unless I realise how these assumptions limit my envisioning, what future self can I imagine? Usually, we avoid difficult questions. They are unsettling. So…, am I supposed to ‘be’ or to ‘be-come’?