The image that hasn't been created yet

You look at the world and you think you already know how this is going to end.
Let me tell you right now, you don’t.

Yes, you probably have more than one scenario of how this ends.
And I get it. I feel it too. I also have days where I find it hard to keep going.

When those days arrive it rarely helps to focus on all the bad things that can happen.

But here is the curious thing.
When you try and shift focus to the good stuff… it is much harder to imagine.

Here let me show you what I mean with a figure I use when I teach.

In order to understand this, I have to guide you through it, one step at a time and
we start with an axis…

An axis where you have one “good end” and one “bad end”. It doesn’t matter what we call the end points. Good and bad, positive and negative, heaven and hell, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that along this axis we have one side that is more preferable than the other.

In the figure you can see that I decided to call it Dream and Nightmare. If I ask you to imagine your dream day, a day when you go to bed with a smile and think to yourself that this was a good day.

Can you see it?

Maybe you went for a long walk in the forest, enjoyed some time on the beach, went fishing, attended a concert or read a book in front of a fireplace.

We are all different so regardless if your dream day involves cooking or baking, building or drawing, writing or playing, I hope that you can see yourself really enjoying yourself on a deep level.

For me that involves freshly baked cookies and cinnamon buns, a hot cup of tea, and plenty of board games with friends and family accompanied with lots of laughter.

All these alternatives, yours and mine, can be placed in the figure as a complex collage or simplified into one symbol. In this case I have chosen the heart, to symbolize the aspect of doing what you love.

You know what your good day looks like, partly because you also know what a bad day looks like. Humans know by contrast and you could spend all your time fantasizing of everything that could go wrong.

The phone call from the hospital. The accident.

The moment when a happy day at the beach transform into a nightmare when someone drowns.

Death, disease and darkness are the building blocks down in this corner and instead of making a collage, I here represent all the sorrows with a broken heart.

All this stuff of nightmares lives for the most part in the back of your mind. If you decided to bring all of them up front, you would likely not get out of bed in the morning.

It’s your hopes and dreams that give you the energy you need during those grey rainy days.

Now remember that we are trying to identify a missing image of humanity and we have so far only talked about your dreams and nightmares. Lets fix that.

By adding a dimension we create 4 quadrants. On the left we have already considered your individual perspective. On the right, we write humanity.

And we all know what to put in the lower right corner.

How many books, movies and stories haven’t we seen about this potential future for humanity.

War, conflicts, climate disasters, pandemics, asteroid impacts and why not a zombie apocalypse as the cherry on top.

I can choose the skull for death or a mushroom cloud for extinction and you would most likely understand and relate to both of them. This section is very easy to imagine because we see it in the news every day.

Here, a lot of our hopelessness and despair are created.

If we then shift our focus to the upper right corner.
The dream side of humanity.

What shall we put here?

Can you see it?

Can you tell me a story or example of how it could play out in the same way as you can do with all the other quadrants?

I ask again, what shall we put here?
And no, I am not asking for a specific emoji.
I am asking for an equally vivid image that you could generate for your own dream day.

Can you see OUR dream future?

I have asked this question to a lot of people, and with a look of both surprise and
curiosity, they all recognize that they can’t see it. But I can see that
they start to search for it with their minds eye.

You might as well. You try to imagine our bright future, but you don’t know where to start.

You feel like every sensation and idea you have of this dream world, is too stupid to utter
out loud. So you keep it all to yourself, scared of being regarded as just a naive dreamer.

There is one place though where you can find inspiration and start conversations about
this. Look at fairy-tales, stories and kid shows. Yes, it’s true, that’s the place to look.

Because there you find clear images of what we want.
What we want to have, build, create and defend.

Just look at one of my personal favorites, Tolkien’s, Lord of the Rings.
Frodo takes the ring from Shire to Mordor, not the other way around.
Why doses’t he live in Mordor and try to destroy the ring at the root of “Saurons Party tree”?

Sorry went a bit too nerdy on you there.

The point is that you can look at any Disney movie and if I show you a black scary castle, a
dark abandoned mansion or an elephant graveyard, you know that those places are
home to the bad guys, never home to the heroes or heroines.

The lovely villages, the sunny parks, the simple playgrounds, the adventurous forests and
endless beaches are the environment and background for all the stories we tell and
show our kids.

I have never seen a show, live or animated, set in an industrial zone.
Or by a polluted river, an oil field, or an ocean dead zone.

We don’t put characters there, because we know that we don’t want places like that.
We want Nature, animals, blue sky, colourful playgrounds and magical imagination.

If you struggle to find an image of the future.
Look at the stories we tell our kids. And start bringing these stories to life.

We know what brings us joy and happiness. In her TED-Talk, Ingrid beautifully
illustrates the power of colour, abundance, and roundness and how to create joy.

For me these are some of the simple building blocks of our future.

Not the high tech, flying cars, robotic future.
But a joyful, simple and balanced future.

Something living that we create together, as an antidote to despair.

There is a lot more to be told about this figure. About directions and dreams… but that is a topic for another week.

For now, I want you to share your image of our future.
You don’t have to do it with me, or on social media. Not unless you want to.

Start with a close friend, a parent or your kids.
Ask them, what they would put in that corner.
Ask them how they see our dream future.
And then invite them to start creating it.

We can do this together!

What… you don’t believe that?

Then I encourage you to dream bigger!

Want to co-create the future?
Send med a DM on LinkedIn

All the best!
Daniel - The Talking Bridge

Ps. Music Motivation: