Monday, April 28, 2014

No Fear of the Future

I was speaking with a friend the other day about how he was teaching his daughter to play chess. As we chatted about how the instruction and subsequent games were coming along, we both commented on the remarkable simple-complexity of chess. On the one hand, chess is easy enough for a child to understand. On the other hand, chess is incredibly complex, requiring a lifetime to master, possibly two! My friend noted how he was trying not to “win too quickly” when it came to these early games with his daughter. He wanted her to learn and not be discouraged. I replied that I had an acquaintance in college who was a chess master and he how could beat me handily in six moves or less, which he always seemed to take great delight in doing. There was no “not winning too quickly” with him. As I bemoaned my chess-inflicted wounds, I related to my friend what my chess master acquaintance always told me, after he had beat me soundly of course! He would always say, “Blake, you have to think three to four moves ahead.” Easy enough for him to say. I was too busy trying to avoid a six-move check mate and further damage to my ego, but I had to admit, it always did seem that he knew what I was thinking. A rare example of ESP? A sign that super-mutant powers really do exist?  Perhaps, but more likely, he was simple able to visualize all the possible outcomes and plan accordingly.

While I may not have the super-mutant ability to think ahead when it comes to the game of chess, I do seem to possess this power when it comes to life. When I begin to think about moving forward in life the first thing that crosses my mind are the countless scenarios that might unfold should I make any prospective move. Not only can I visualize the first round of scenarios but I can envision second, third, and fourth round scenarios, the events that ripple out of possible events and my potential responses. Lest you dismiss this as a highly sharpened and very active imagination, let me mention that I can also classify these scenarios and group them by theme and outcome. I can file and access them faster than any supercomputer. At the risk of boasting, oddly enough, I also possess the ability to know how other people will respond to my responses which in turn leads me to respond in ways that generate responses that I already foresee! What can I say? I have a gift.

Here’s the thing about my gift. Most of what I foresee is bad, really bad. I know that whatever I do, you will not respond well which will in turn force me to respond in an appropriate manner which will make me look bad and then I know what you will think about me which will then lead me to seek to correct that thought which will in part correct your thought but create new dilemmas which are not good which I will then have to address but you will not understand and then. . .You get the point. It’s a gift. (Sigh!) I am just not sure what to do with my gift. What do you do when you have been gifted with the ability to know exactly how things will go and that knowledge tells you that they will go badly?

For some time I have pondered my gift. Do I come out and admit my super-power, a super-power that only foretells doom and gloom? Do I try to use my gift, a gift that can only bring pain and suffering to my life and the lives of others? NO! I cannot use this gift. It is a curse, a terrible, terrible curse. I am afraid of it and afraid of what it tells me. I must find a way to negate this terrible foresight into the future. . .and I think I have. It has taken some deep processing, but I now think I know what to do. I am to do nothing. If I do nothing I have nothing to fear.

Actually, this is quite brilliant. I am not sure why I didn’t think of it before. If I do nothing, nothing will happen. What do I have to worry about if I choose to do nothing at all? If I stay put, refuse to move, reject every inclination to step out and try something new, then I can forestall and perhaps even avert your response, my response to your response which will negate any mis-thinking you might have thus necessitating my response which you will not fully understand creating new dilemmas which I would have to address, but now I do not have to because I have chosen to do nothing. As I have chosen to do nothing, I have nothing to fear.

There is just one problem with my brilliant plan. (Sigh! There always a downside to brilliance.) Doing nothing is pretty lame. When I choose to do nothing, nothing happens. When I refuse to step out, I go nowhere. When I reject every option, all options close themselves off to me. My gift, my terrible gift to see the future, a horrible future becomes a curse. If I want something to happen, I have to do something, but I am afraid, afraid of what might be.

How do you do something when you know, you just know what is going to happen, and it is all bad? How do you step out when stepping out makes you afraid, not afraid of what is but of what might be? How do you live when all you can think about is: if this. . .then that? The possible futures are overwhelming and debilitating. They become a cage that imprisons me in the present, a present that is lame, something less than exhilarating.  I am finding that on my own I cannot. I cannot live, I cannot step into the future on my own, but then I don’t have to. I don’t have to live on my own because Jesus has promised to live with me. He has promised to live with me in the present and with me as my future becomes my present. Here’s the thing about life with Jesus. I am discovering that his presence transforms my future even as it becomes my present. Much of what I saw never comes to be and what does. . .well, Jesus seems to give me the grace to bear it. So, though possessor of super-mutant power I may be, I am also one who possesses Christ and he possesses me, and it is this, this wonderful presence, that enables me to do something.



A fellow traveler,


Blake

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