Tabula rasa

futurum non est scriptum

“The future is unwritten.”
~ from the cover art of the single “Know Your Rights” by the Clash
1982

More or less the same

Many years ago, one of my teachers pointed out that if you look at how your life is and magnify the things you like and reduce the things you don't like, then your new life will be more or less the same. It might be more like what you want and less like what you don’t want, but it won’t be very different. It will be more or less the same as it is now. For a great many people, that seems tedious.

Instead, she suggested, try starting with a blank slate. Or, if you prefer to upgrade to multi-colour pens and a chemical smell instead of chalk dust, an empty white board.

Design things the way you would have them be if you could have anything you want. Don't worry about how you get to what you want, how it progresses from where you are. Maybe it doesn't do that. Maybe the life you want manifests when you declare what you actually want. Maybe there doesn't look like there is any path to that way of living because the life you have been living has been designed by someone else, or by "programming" or by the incantations and repetitions of others. If you aren't sure why you are afraid of something, maybe it isn't your fear. If how you've been told to live and feel are things that don't make sense, maybe they aren't from within you.

You get to choose. You have choices to take.

It’s all through our literature, and almost all of our literature in the English language relates to two sets of books that were everywhere four hundred years ago. There are a great many stories in each set of books. Much of what passes for popular culture over the last four centuries has been either a celebration of one of those stories or an attempt to deny it and reverse it. Those two sets of books are: the Holy Bible; the collected works of William Shakespeare.

Unwritten

That’s what it says up top, in Latin. Tabula rasa - an empty slate. Futurum non est scriptum - the future isn’t written.

It shows up in films like “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” with Sarah Connor saying it, writing it, and saying “No fate but what we make.” It shows up in “Grosse Pointe Blank” when Martin Blank says he’s sorry for f##king up her life and Debbie Newberry says, “It’s not over.” It shows up in “Back to the Future III” with Emmet Brown saying that the future is not yet written. It is referenced in “The Breakfast Club.” Feel free to share other encounters with this idea you remember, or when you come upon them, in the comments.

We live in a strange time, a liminal time. It is a time of thresholds.

Rod Serling knew it. He wrote about the concept of “the twilight zone,” a place between shadow and substance. A land of imagination, without boundaries. “It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.”

There are many pathways that are open right now. That has not always seemed to be the case, and that may not seem in the near future to be the case, but it is always true. Your choices matter. God created you with free will to see what you would do.

Events

Events beyond your control happen all the time. So, yes, it is possible that there will be a “mass casualty event” as the deep state has clearly announced they are planning. They don’t want to lose power in the election that occurs in forty-one days, but they don’t see a path to victory. So they may choose to invoke the “continuity of government” executive orders, of which there are a great many, and choose to ignore the outcome of the election. How you react in that event is not up to them. It is up to you.

There may be a great earthquake, a day of destruction, when the towers fall. Such an event is prophesied in Isaiah 30 and in other passages in the Bible. There may be a great burning, as mentioned also in Isaiah 30 with the Sun being seven times brighter, and described in Malachi 4 and Revelation 18. These are events that are not up to you. They are up to God. Jesus says that no one but God knows the day and the hour of these events, not even the son, only the Father.

It would be well to make your plans for the future based on what you want. Pray for guidance. Pray for enlightenment. Pray for ingenuity. I pray every day, several times a day, for guidance, resources, ingenuity, endurance, fortitude, and patience. I pray for those things, and for what I want: to free the slaves, stop the wars, end tyranny, cast out all demons from this realm, translate the Gospels into every language, care for the young and the old, the sick and the dying, with dignity and respect, out of a place of humility, and carry the Gospels to the farthest stars and all souls in between. These are aspects of the future I want.

Taking Action

It is not only about the design. You can get a ream of paper and fill the pages with lists of ideas, drawings, sketches, and plans. I have half a ream of paper from the last year covered with such thoughts.

But it is also about taking choices. For the future to be written by you, you have to be acting in your capacities as a person. Maybe as a designer, or a vision director. Maybe as a leader, or executor, or executrix. (Yes, we do have genders for nouns, for good and abundant reasons.) Maybe you will be a performer, or a researcher, or a student, or an author. What you choose to do matters, and what you intend also matters. So formulate some intentions and take some actions.

Over the years, I have taken much solace in the path of Rikki-Tikki Tavi from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Run and find out. Don’t just speculate, don’t take the word of someone else, don’t look at the screen and trust that you are being shown the truth. Run. Go where the action is. Find out the truth.

Doing so has taken me to every state in the USA, including Alaska and Hawai’i. It has carried me across each of the major oceans (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian) and onto four different continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America) and about two dozen countries depending on whether you count ambitions or actualities, and through the territories of dozens of aboriginal peoples.

More importantly, I’ve met people who want to do things in different industries. So I have found out where freedom events are happening, and where mining industry conferences are happening, and where people are talking about individual sovereignty, or free market money, or digital gold currencies, or privacy, or life extension, or aerobatic aeroplanes, or space yacht racing. And I don’t just get on a virtual conference software system, I go where the people are and take their measure in person.

Shaking someone’s hand matters. Looking them in the eye matters. Your soul has connexions to many planes of existence. Information exists in the actual physical interaction of your electro-magnetic fields of energy and those of others. That’s why the Native American scouts in Vietnam who had their hair cut off were less capable at scouting and detecting the presence of others than those whose hair was left alone.

Culture matters. Presence matters. Being there is big. Showing up is essential.

This essay isn’t about what I’m planning. I’ve tried to make that clear in a great many other essays on this ‘stack. I’m planning a lot of ventures involved in knowledge, film, television, publishing; aviation, space, flying cars; mining, metallurgy, manufacturing; logistics, distribution, finance; software systems; search and rescue services; health services; abbeys, monasteries, and cathedrals.

My goal here is not to tell you what you should do. For most of you, I don’t really know you, let alone what course you should choose. My goal in this essay is to remind you that you are free, sovereign, and empowered by God to choose.

Choose. You’ll be glad you did.

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That’s all I’ve got for today. Come back next time when I have something new. Or old.