When does the future begin?

Meditations from a walk in the park.

I strolled through the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo in the spring. It was early morning. Budding trees. Spring flowers. Life and renewal. Nudes in bronze and granite everywhere. The human struggle in forms metaphorical, abstract and in your face all at once.

A male figure catches my attention. He is strong. At the top of his game. AND he is consumed by struggle. Infant boys clinging to his limbs. Trying to shake them off and keep them safe all at once? What is his expression? Concentration? Pain? Frustration?

Then I see it. Fear. Anger. He is fighting his daemons. Trying to escape. His daemons simultaneously propelling him forward and holding him back. He’s trying to escape his patterns and prove the past wrong. Yet the daemons haunt him making him cling to that same past. How does he shake the past and become the person he has the potential to be.

It was all there. His strength and power. His struggle. The weight of his past. The delicate truths that define him. The opportunity to be free that only comes when he stops the fight.

And so I wondered, when does the future begin?