One of the things I find the hardest about being around groups of medically well middle class white people - is their relentless certainty about the future, their belief that “things always work out,” their belief that they own and control an ever improving, unfolding future

Ive never been able to have such confident expectations- for a variety of reasons - but after three years of lving with a mysterious cancer? I cannot even fathom the entitlement they feel for an ever-better continuously unfolding future.

And if I dare to speak AT ALL (I rarely do) of my wildly different ideas about my future, my thoughts about my childrens future, my expectation that the future is an utterly uncertain construct - I am ignored, or shamed, or silenced or argued with.

If you don’t share their certainty? You are threating, upsetting, problematic.

It is so exhausting, so deadening, flattening, boring to be around. Things are only permitted to get better. Any other possibility- say that NOW migbt be better than later - is a disruptive threat

My future could be okay. But my future could also be running out and involve decline and suffering

But they all want to talk happily and confidently about what is next and beleive in their own will and planning and perpetual improvement- & it is, for me, completely alienating

Because my only options are to sit silently while they play their confidence games about building a better life that always lies ahead of them -

Or I can try to express some small part of my own experience and be viewed as a total buzz kill.

And here is the deal: I think I am way HAPPIER since the ability to play that silly futurizing game hs been slapped out of my hands by my realities - and while they are busy imaging their great come and get it day coming just around the bend - they all seem so ANXIOUS to me.

I mean - they visualize some confident future that they think they can completely plan for - and yet, they seem so frightened about what they will have to face if it never comes.

And I’m quite committed, after negotiating so many unpredictable twist and turns for good and ill in every direction- that the future is completely MYSTERIOUS - and way more unpredictable that most ever want to acknowledge - and I’ve come to find that beautiful and liberating.

But I rarely get to make any reference to that sense of awe and gratitude and joy in now that comes with the construct of an inherently unilaterally uncertain future -

(Except here on twitter I suppose)

Because they are all so busy planning ahead....