Giulio Bonasone, After Giulio Romano:
An Omen of the Future Greatness of Augustus (16th century)

" … we're heading in precisely that direction!"

Optimism seems an intrinsic part of Success. I can't imagine Success without a significant contribution from positive anticipation. The Eeyores of this world can't experience Success, perhaps because their perspective won't allow it to manifest. Those who firmly believe in their own positive potential seem to more comfortably realize some semblance of it. The belief need not necessarily be based upon any verifiable facts and might eventually prove to have been pure fantasy.

Nevertheless, it might still positively contribute to some sense of Success, even if it proves to be less than anticipated. It might be that Successes mainly inhabit such Futures, perhaps better savored in anticipation than they will ever be in realization. Futures seem wide open, with ample space available for such notions. Presents and pasts seem constricted in comparison.

I try to travel hopefully. I figure I might just as well feel hopeful. I cannot reliably predict what's next, so I might just as well ride there on flights of fancy. I discard more dreams than I ever realize. Still, I tend to toss them in favor of even more alluring ones, there apparently being an infinite inventory of alluring alternative Futures available. If one's attractiveness fades, another can conveniently take its place. I work hard to avoid One Best Way thinking, where I convince myself I can access only one option. When the choices winnow down to one, that's the start of despotism. Where choices proliferate, freedom reigns.

In two days, my most recent Future will have come. I will be done creating this Success Series and feel ready to move on to the next one. The next one will be my twenty-fourth series since I started this daily practice, this Success series being the twenty-third series in succession. Finishing anything feels inherently disappointing because the Futures within every bit of unfinished business collapse in the moment of completion. Anything could become anything until that instant when it finally becomes something and the creating's finished. Sure, clean-up steps follow, but the DNA seems frozen, the potential no longer as promising once the final installment's done. So then, my foreground exponentially expands as I survey a brand new horizon filled with possible Futures, from frozen in a present completion to overflowing with potential in about one second.

I might just as well judge every completion as a Success. Its potential no longer in question; it costs me nothing to presume that anything past just went to Heaven. The alternatives require me to keep my completions open as if my Pasts reside in my Futures. I do not move on, but into. My Futures, just like yours, have not yet happened and, truth told, never will. Their point could not possibly be actual manifestation but something entirely different. They might serve as motivation or impending disappointments, ultimately my choice. I might just as well consider them carrots, alluringly dangling just ahead, rather than potential punishments, since with Futures, they're never any more actual than notions. Most of my Successes seem to inhabit my Futures. How fortunate that we're heading in precisely that direction together!

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Success, #PureSchmaltz