When the Present Kills the Future

It’s interesting how one typing error can wreak havoc with an idea. I was methodically hunting and pecking my way through this blog when a simple keystroke malfunction led me to a place I didn’t intend to go. The ‘s’ and ‘d’ buttons are right next to each other and on their own play no greater role than being arbitrary letters assigned with a  certain sound. However, string them alongside a bunch of other random letters and ideas can be formed, and this is where things can deviate from what is intended to what it presented.

Everyone has a story conveys a much different connotation than everyone had a story.

My embarrassingly poor typing skills have caused me to reflect on the difference between these two thoughts because I accidently punched the d when I meant to hit the s. Present and past tense narratives are two entirely different things and we often forget that what we see today is not always an accurate indicator of what happened yesterday.

Or a month ago. Or a year ago. Or a lifetime ago.

Think how your own life has evolved over the years and how different you likely are right now when compared to the version of yourself from 5 years ago. If a stranger saw you today, would he or she get an accurate representation of what you used to be? But this doesn’t stop us from looking at others without ever really seeing them. Every person you drive pass on Highway 93 not only has a story, they had a story. The lady walking in front of you on the sidewalk in downtown Kalispell is not, exclusively, all that you see.

It is easy to label people and trap them in a snapshot of time. What we see is what we get and we lose the context for how that person became what we see. We eliminate the past because we are ignorant of it and don’t allow it to contribute to the greater, fuller picture of the person we see today. And this is scary because when we lose context we lose the ability to see past today. We no longer ascribe meaning to the future and we abandon tangible prospects of hope because we forget what we once were and narrowly focus on our present circumstances as the end-all and be-all of reality.

A man sleeping in Woodland Park was never a veteran who served 3 tours in Afghanistan. The lady using the internet at the public library was never a dental assistant who lost her job. The gentleman holding the sign, asking for work, never owned his own business that was destroyed in a fire.

We all had a story. The only difference is that some of us have better chapters than others but the ending is not yet written.