Writing a living future
ONE OF MY FAVORITE WAYS of being with my clients is when the dialogue suddenly time travels into the future. You can almost feel it when it’s about to happen. A tale of a frustrated interaction with a colleague or a terrible edict from the C-suite starts to slow down, and there’s an almost furtive moment when something else pops up—like a little furred creature cautiously peeking their head up above the grass to see what’s out there. If we can hold the space, if we can keep from frightening the messenger back into their den, we may notice something new and interesting out past the treetops, off towards the horizon, where the sun is just now lighting up the space ahead.
I know that moment has worked when the storytelling shifts from what has happened to what might happen in the future. I know we’re getting to the good stuff if what might happen is something wild and seemingly impossible but also specific, something that we don’t usually give ourselves permission to dream about: their organization converting to worker ownership, joining up with their favorite coworkers to start a small business together, taking over that vacant lot down the street and building a community studio, opening a hardware store or a garden shop or an oyster farm.
Those stories aren’t necessarily useful for their plausibility—in the moments when they show up, they are often anything but. Rather, they are useful because they expose some want or desire, one that has probably been kept under lock and key, too dangerous to be let out into the world. We’re wont to tuck our greatest longings away because then we can’t be hurt when they don’t come true. But left untended, those longings can sicken us, they can fester and rot and poison the ground around us. Warded up, the little creature becomes huge and monstrous, armed with tooth and claw, and the labor needed to guard the doors and keep the walls high drains our energy, leaves us exhausted and weary and sad. Our dreams need light and air to breathe and heal, just as we do.
It seems especially difficult to let our dreams out into the world these days. It seems radical to dream at all. But curtailing our dreams in the face of authoritarianism is to obey in advance; it is to relinquish our right to good lives and good work—work that makes change in the world, that serves the needs of the living—before anyone so much as raises a fist to stop us. We may not be able to bring our dreams into the world unharmed. We may have to accept that some of our dreams will be carried not only by us, but by the next generation, and the next after that. But we cannot build towards a future that we cannot imagine. We need to lift our heads up, to see the light on the horizon, to remember that the future is always and forever undiscovered and uncertain—and where there is uncertainty there is also the potential for change.
The thing is that once we let those dreams out, they become a source of energy instead of a drain. Even if they aren’t reachable in their original form—or if we can recognize the escapist fantasy that lurks within—releasing them gives us room to play with them, to converse, to let them shapeshift into something like a direction or intention, the next experimental step. Rather than a caged and dangerous beast, they become a willing and capable sidekick, with all manner of magical powers and enchanted amulets to help us on our way.
All of which is to say, starting early next year, I’m going to gather a small group of people to time travel together. Using the mode of speculative fiction, we’ll write about our work, and then reflect with fellow workers and time travelers about what that writing tells us about our environment, needs, fears, commitments, and dreams of the future. We’ll use storytelling to unlock those long-hidden hopes and release their power to get unstuck in the present—to better understand what work means to us and how we might learn to shape it and shift it in new directions, both in the stories we tell and in the ways those stories manifest in the world. Together, we’ll make space to let our dreams out into the clear, bright sun and learn what incantations and spells and secret passageways they’ve been holding for us all this time.
The first group will begin in late January 2025. Space will be very limited, so get on the waitlist if you want to be the first to know when applications open up.