(Editor’s note: This article is scheduled to appear in the fall Edition of “Compass”–the professional journal of futurists. It will be available in PDF form soon).
In Letters to a Young Poet, the German poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves … [D]o not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the question now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live some distant day into the answer.”
As a professional futurist, I begin with this quote because the answer to the question: What is the future of love is not something that can be answered, it can only be lived.
To explain, allow me to backtrack. Before exploring – and living – the question of What is the future of love we must first consider another question: When will the future be created?
To answer by saying the future will be created in the future is reductive. Of course, it is true that the future will be created in the future but such an answer is circular and unhelpful.
A more profound answer is to acknowledge this truth: The only time the future can be created is NOW – in the present moment. After all, what is the future but a relentless succession of present moments flowing into an infinite and never-ending horizon.
I begin with these pedantic points to assert that the answer to our question – What is the future of love? – will not be found at some vague, ill-defined moment “in the future.” The answer to our question is embedded in the present and we can only arrive at our destined future by living – and truly being present – in the NOW.
Another question we might want to explore before delving into the question, What is the future of love is: What is love? This is a slippery question and we could accept Merriam-Webster’s definition of love but I feel most people would agree that such a definition, while sufficient, does not fully capture or encompass the deep richness of the concept of love.
A second possibility is to fall back upon the wisdom of Supreme Court Justice William Potter who, while once struggling to legally define what qualified as an obscenity, responded by saying, “I’ll know it when I see it.” I think that most of us might also be able to say much the same of love, but such a nebulous framework also leaves much to be desired.
A third possibility is to acknowledge that the Ancient Greeks had a fuller idea of love by separating it into six different and distinct words: Eros (passionate, sexual love), Philia (brotherly love), Storage (familial love), Ludus (playful love), Philiautia (self-love) and Agape (selfless, unconditional love for all of humanity).
The latter term, agape, best encompasses how I tend to think of love but I also believe we might be able to simplify our task by accepting that each and everyone of us is capable of love. And, if we are capable of love, we can accept that each of us possesses the ability to love in the present moment. This is the essence of free will.
To say that we are capable of love in the present moment is neither naive nor overly simplistic. It is a profound truth. My point is this: The answer to the question What is the future of love does not lie outside of us. Nor is it even an outer, distant destination at which humanity will arrive after undergoing some massive, life-altering epiphany. Rather, the future of love is an act of inner transformation that can be achieved right now.
To better understand the ever and ongoing transformation of love, I would like to use two metaphors from the natural world to better explain how the future of love may continue to unfold.
The first is that of a murmuration. If you don’t know what a murmuration is, I invite you to watch this video but it is broadly defined as a large group of birds (usually starlings) all flying together and changing directions simultaneously.
To witness a murmuration is a thing of beauty but what is astounding is that this stunning complexity is created by the birds following three simple rules – separation, alignment and cohesion. First, each bird keeps an equi-distance from nearby birds to avoid collision. Second, they match the direction and speed of one’s neighbors and, third, if an individual bird becomes separated from the flock, it returns as quickly as possible to the whole.
Using this metaphor as a model, I invite you to view the future of love as little more than society following three general rules: 1.) Be present in the NOW; 2.) Love NOW and 3.) Return to love if and when one falls away from the principle.
The second metaphor I’d like you to consider is that of a caterpillar transforming into a monarch butterfly. What is amazing about this process is that the caterpillar – a slow, sluggish, dull-colored insect capable of only modest movement – possesses within itself everything necessary to evolve into a stunning, multi-colored creature capable of soaring to great heights, riding on the currents of winds, traveling astounding distances, and adhering to an inner wisdom that somehow knows how to return to a home it has never known.
An overly simplified explanation of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis is as follows: Within each caterpillar there exists something known as imaginal cells. These imaginal cells contain within their DNA the instructions to reconfigure the creature’s existing cells into the structure of a butterfly.
Alas, before the imaginal cells can begin transforming the caterpillar’s cells into a new being, the caterpillar must first dissolve to itself in the pupa (or chrysalis) stage. Once this process has been completed, the imaginal cells begin recruiting the cells to reposition and rebuild themselves into an entirely new being.
Now, to combine the two metaphors, imagine the first starlings as the imaginal cells of a murmuration. In a sense, these early birds (which somehow know they are meant to be something greater than themselves) invite other birds to join them in the present moment. Next, each subsequent bird adds its voice to the growing chorus and encourages more of the surrounding birds to join them in the present moment. In short order, a murmuration of thousands of individual birds are soon dancing and pulsating across the sky such that they appear as a single entity moving in sync to some hidden, mysterious inner truth.
Is it not possible, therefore, that the future of love may follow a similar trajectory? There is no reason to believe that the evolution of humanity is either complete or anywhere near completion. What if humanity is meant to evolve and to transform into something greater than our individual selves and all that is necessary is that we follow three rules:
- Be present NOW;
- Love NOW unconditionally; and
- If we fall away from love for whatever reason (i.e. fear, hate, injustice, ego, power, money, etc.), we simply return to a state of love as quickly as possible.
Anais Nin, a French-born American diarist, once penned this poignant statement: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Well, our day is here and the time is now for each of us to blossom. Personally, I do not accept that humanity is simply a random collection of 8 billion-plus separate individuals meant to eke out some sluggish existence on this planet but, instead, we are each an individual part of a greater emerging whole.
Furthermore, what if this world has, in fact, been slowly blossoming for some time – just as the sages, mystics and wisdom teachers of the past have been saying all along. And what if, all that is necessary for this future to be created, is for each of us to live into the question “What is the Future of Love?” and love now in this present moment.
Jack Uldrich is a well-recognized global futurist, speaker, and the author of 14 books. He is a frequent speaker on technology, change management and leadership and has addressed hundreds of corporations, associations and not-for-profit organizations on five continents.
Jack is a former naval intelligence officer and Defense Department official. He served as the director of the Minnesota Office of Strategic and Long-Range Planning under Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. His books Business as Unusual: A Futurist’s Unorthodox, Unconventional, and Uncomfortable Guide to Doing Business and The RE Generation: How Today’s Agents of Change Are Creating a New Business Ethos have helped many navigate trends that emerged and converged during the past five years. His most recent book is A Smarter Farm: How AI is Revolutionizing the Future of Agriculture.
Uldrich also teaches a course on strategic froresight at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University and is the futurist-in-residence at the Steger Leadership Center in Ely, Minnesota.
