Traveling to the Future

Looking at the headlines today, I wondered what will the future hold for America and for the world. I thought about what it would be like to be transported into the future, to get a glimpse of a time when I will not still be alive. A good year would be 2150, because I have this weird belief that I m going to live to be 108 years old. Don’t even ask me to explain it to you!

In the year 2150, will I find that people have to go to museums to see pictures of animals that roamed freely on the earth even into the 21st century, such as polar bears,  elephants, tigers, bears, and zebras, just to name a few? I wonder if there will be any fish still in the oceans and rivers, or will I learn that people have to add artificial flavorings of salmon, tuna, shrimp, and other types of fish to their recipes, because the real things will have been extinct for nearly half a century?

When I read of the ideological divides between political parties today, in which evidence does not sway opinions, I worry that people in 2150 will have lost the ability to create a symphony on issues such as climate change, criminal justice reform, or how to alleviate gross inequality between the rich and the poor.

Hopefully, by 2150, people will have learned to distinguish between what is real and what is fake in regards to opinions given in the media before it is too late, so they are able to to sit down and come to bipartisan solutions to the problems that separate us today. I hope that politics in 2150 will be more civil and less soul-damaging to candidates, their families, and the general populace.

I hope to see that by 2150, race will not matter, and that Dr. King’s dream that people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin will be a reality, for my great-great-great- great grandchildren. I hope to see that people simply love each other as neighbors and fellow humans.

I will shout for joy if America has not continued to be the nation with the most numbers of its people in prison, even more than China or Russia, and that the war on drugs with long prison sentences for users will be ended. Hopefully, by 2150 there will not be an opioid epidemic.

I hope that by 2150 that affordable housing will be the norm, not the exception, in every state in America. I hope that people can live wherever they wish, because all neighborhoods will be safe, schools will provide equal education in every neighborhood, and hospitals will dispense equality of healthcare to everyone.

By 2150, I am hoping to find that many elderly people do not have to choose between eating and buying their medications. The stronghold by the pharmaceutical corporations on the healthcare system will be broken, and the costs of medicine will allow everyone an equally long life. This resonates with me as an elderly American.

Yes, I know that I expect a lot to happen between now and 2150, but believe in the next generations, as many of them are already speaking out against the injustice and inequality in the world. I remember that it was young, college age kids who protested in the 1950s and 1960s and brought about changes that impacted my life for the better.

I have witnessed changes over the last 50 years that my great-great-great grandparents could never have imagined, even as they had hopes for the future. So, I am cautiously optimistic about a future that I will not see.  My faith is built on 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Fandango prompt is Resonate. Ragtag prompt is Remember. Word of the Day Challenge is Symphony. Daily Addictions prompt is Transport.