A Decision Made
Some Personal Reflections about Joy
I have spent almost three years nearly trying to write my second book on foresight and our assumptions. I have had a few life obstacles get in the way, including a good one – our daughter’s wedding earlier this year and a not so good one – an anxiety episode that took three months out of my life (well, not really but that is another story). Some medical tests – all good – and a great deal of doubt about the book I was trying to write. Why?
· Foresight is rarely used as a cognitive capacity in futures studies. It is more often used to describe methods and processes and even – sigh - the field. Riel Miller told me to stop fighting the war to get foresight accepted as a cognitive capacity because the horse had already bolted from the stable. He told me to focus on the new in the field but I’m stubborn and I have been resisting. But it’s like standing in the dark and trying to find a light switch that doesn’t exist. I can see some of the new and I want to focus on that.
· My PhD research was on worldviews and assumptions. I loved writing this. It used four ideas (worldviews) of the university, identified their embedded futures images and the assumptions underpinning them, and ended with an attempt to develop a framework to show how these assumptions can be integrated in the present to construct new conversations about our collective university futures.
· Then I tried to make that framework practical – I was fooling myself. I can’t make people change their minds with pretty diagrams about conversations about futures. A false assumption of mine there.
· I need to go back to the basics of my thesis – worldviews and assumptions in futures and how they keep our thinking and imaginations about futures bounded in the present. But I can’t do another research project to get any qualitative data to support my thinking. Too late, no time – I’m over 60 now, and I want to live with what brings me joy. Twee, I know, but hey, I don’t care. Writing brings me joy, my photography brings me joy, travel brings me joy, my children bring me joy. I’m over more research. And I’m over trying to write a book that has lost its joy for me.
So, what now? I am going to reframe my book from the beginning. I know what I want to write about, and I will write about those topics, among other things:
1. How foresight is a cognitive capacity and how its meaning is largely unconscious in the futures field (I will harp on a little about foresight is a misused term in future too);
2. How foresight is constructed from our worldviews and assumptions, which shape how we define foresight and how keep it as an unconscious capacity in the present as a result;
3. Explore the theory of worldviews and assumptions in more detail as foundational knowledge we need to have in futures studies; and
4. Use an adapted form of integral futures to show how we can use the foundational knowledge in futures studies with a theoretical framework that I have already developed in my previous book attempts – that was the easy part.
The decision in the title of this post is to stop doing the things that I like but are taking me away from those that give me joy. No more conferences. No more reviewing for journals, and no more editorial jobs. A focus on living more purposefully instead of what I think I should be doing to stay connected with the futures field since I closed my business. I hope my writing - which I can do more of now - will keep me connected.
This is same direction with a different path that I feel in my bones is the right one. Leaving the things that triggered my anxiety in the past years behind. Finding the mental peace I’ve been looking for these past few years and have partially found.
I have a site on SubStack ( Maree’s Travel Photos) that has been dormant until now. It’s a place I will put the best of my travel photography now - this will take some time, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready. This will give my joy.
I will also keep writing about futures on Foresight in the Present off course because futures and foresight are embedded in my brain, and I can’t ignore that. And writing about it does give me joy.
Till next time, with joy
Maree
Hi Maree! I think nowadays the vibe of becoming 60 reflects all what you have described!
But I will look foward to your next writings since as a Psychology and Practioner Futures Thinking I am interested in Futures as a cognitive function. Enjoy!
Maree - when we met it was in the early context of futures strategy in policing. The joy of finding people who 'got' futures was itself was something shared by all. As we have all created a path in (or around) the field, the joys we pursued have been many. A sadness for me is that we have not come back together to share our findings and so the joy for me is in finding your substack again.
Yet the joy felt by doing something for your own future transcends all things. And having the choice to do this is itself joyful, the alternatives being far less so.
There is much to see that is positive in the future, individually and I believe, collectively. As you say, the unconscious choices people will make because of the constructs everyone self-defines will govern their individual futures, and the collective joy is formed in the want for positive shared events in the future.
May all around you experience their joy with you too. Take care.