大象传媒

The future troubles me.聽聽

I worry about all sorts of stuff. These are not global concerns.聽聽I鈥檓 good with the great shifts of human and planetary history.

No. With me, it鈥檚 the little things.

When I was waiting for my children to be born, I fretted over what we would call them, about whether they鈥檇 be good at maths or baking. I feared their being taller than me.聽聽I worried they might not like cricket.

But the thing that exercised me most was the noise they would make.

Not the crying and the night-time snuffling; I was weirdly confident about dealing with that. No. My fear of the future was that, when they learned to talk, I wouldn鈥檛 like the sound of their voices. I feared irritating squeakiness.聽聽I feared whining and strange, unfamiliar accents.

It was, of course, entirely irrational.

But fear of the future is irrational.聽聽We cannot see it and we cannot know it and there is just as much sense in hope as there is in fear.聽聽Yet we are still fearful.

Perhaps it鈥檚 understandable, especially now. We鈥檝e spent over a year looking into a future that swims in and out of focus like the bit in a movie where someone wakes with a colossal hangover. Every time we think we can see something clearly - the pub, our grandparents, a choir rehearsal, even just popping round to a friend鈥檚 - it somehow loses sharpness and disappears.

And not knowing the future, we鈥檝e feared the worst.

We always have.

The wise person who compiled the book of Proverbs in the Bible offered this by way of reassurance.

鈥淪urely there is a future鈥�.

And they continue, 鈥淪urely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off鈥�.

It鈥檚 brilliant precisely because it鈥檚 not specific.聽聽I reckon the mere existence of hope, the certainty of a future is a good start.聽聽We don鈥檛 have to articulate everything we hope for.聽聽But neither do we have to fear that our hopes will never materialise.

There is a future.

My children, as it turns out are nothing like I expected and even though none of them really loves cricket, they are far more than I could ever have hoped for.

And as for their voices?

I want to hear them every day.