Why does Your New Favorite Author live in the past?

You may have noticed, Fair Reader, that every one of these posts has something to do with the past. And every one ties the past in some way with the present. This is in keeping with our motto: “Seeking fresh meanings in our common past.” (See the top of this page.)

Have you not noticed my references to the future?

That can’t be it, because I haven’t made any. 

Is this because I have no interest in the future? Au contraire. I am eager to see how things will work out. But I am patient.

I don’t feel competent to comment on the future. It isn’t here yet. 

My ability to predict the next fifteen minutes has proven inadequate over the past seventy-eight years or so. How dare I venture a guess farther out?

I am content to wait until the future happens and then talk about it when it has become the past, as it always, eventually, does. Hindsight is better than foresight.

Confucius, the ancient Chinese sage, once said 君子欲訥於言而敏於行。It has been translated, “The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.” 

But why go into all that? Maybe the superior man acts first and speaks later so that he will know what he did before he comments on it. It turns out the superior man is not any better at telling the future than I am.

The public media are full of inspiring things that relate to the future. E.g., “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not?”

With all due respect to the late Robert F. Kennedy, and to George Bernard Shaw before him—this is balderdash. 

Things that are dreamt of, or wished for, are unreal. Nothing is real until it happens.

Once it has happened—once it is in the past—a world of possibilities is suggested. That’s the world where I live.

Hope you feel comfortable joining me here sometimes. I’ll leave the light on for ya.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer