Would you like to know what the future has in
stall for you ? In fact, the whole world is obsessed with the idea
of knowing what will happen tomorrow, next week or in ten years
time. The movie 'Paycheck' starring Ben Affleck is a riveting
thriller about the past and the future – and a huge paycheck he
never gets.Analysts make a fortune
predicting the ups and downs of the stock exchange. We watch the
weather report to see whether we can go to the beach on Sunday and
try to pick 6 out of 49 numbers to win our first or second million –
but none of these systems work with a great degree of accuracy.
In ‘Paycheck’, Ben Affleck is a clever
computer engineer who develops rip-off computer products for
high-tech corporations, but must always have his short-term memory
erased after each assignment so that his employers can claim the
copyright. In his job for the “Allcom” company, it takes him three
years to build a machine that can look into the future – and is
promptly swindled out of his paycheck.
But he knew what was coming and after his
memory is erased, Uma Thurman as his biologist girlfriend helps him
to retrace what happened in order to prevent a global catastrophe.
That’s the plot, but why am I writing this ?
What struck me was a little sentence
in the dialogue: “Once you know the future, you don’t have a future
anymore”.
I had never thought of that before, but it’s
true. What is it that we call the future ? In my view, it is the sum
total of all the interactions we still have to experience to fulfill
the aspirations which we think will make us a more successful
person.
In other words, the future – by definition –
includes an element of uncertainty, and if you take that away, you
don’t have a future. All you would have is a path on which you go
through the motions, but what for ? And where to ? Life as we know
it on this planet would be meaningless if we knew the destination of
every road we travel, the outcome of every action we take.
We tend to forget that in reality time doesn’t
exist. It is just a concept – a very useful and necessary one - that
human beings have to live by in their limited consciousness to
manage a number of experiences and learn from them. We cannot see
both sides of the same coin at once, only one after the other. Even
a mirror doesn’t help, believe me.
That’s precisely why we are so intrigued by
the future - we want to know it all, right now : What’s going to
happen ? Will we succeed or fail in whatever we are doing ? This
curiosity is driving us forward.
We all know some people who couldn’t be
bothered, of course : ‘Who cares what happens tomorrow, as long as I
have a good time today’. We sometimes admire them because on the
surface, they don’t seem to have any doubts in their
‘happy-go-lucky’ lives. If you are not driving your challenges,
however, you will be driven and confronted with them – life will not
stand still for you.
And those who constantly fear that some
disaster is around the corner ? Looks like they magically attract
every manner of misfortune and not make any progress at all - and
yet they too will eventually learn from their continual setbacks.
There is plenty of evidence that some gifted
people can in fact look into the future, though – what is it that
they see then ? If there is no past and no future, all that really
exists is the present moment, and each of these moments literally
has limitless possibilities, more than we realize. What we get an
occasional glimpse of is potential, a likelihood of events, but
nothing cast in concrete.
The big chance we owe to ourselves is to shape
that potential into something worthwhile and exciting and learn from
it, with everything we’ve got. Since we all bring something unique
to the party, imagine the endless variety !
Paycheck or no paycheck : life today is the
real thriller, and I have my very own. So do you.
