je pense

Have you ever looked back at those goals you had set right out of college?

Marriage? Career? Health?

Then and Now. Perhaps they still remain the same or in reverse order.

No one set out with a goal of multiple marriages.

Or multiple careers.

Yet it has happened, taken most of us by surprise. On a macro scale, the same speed of change has occurred,  right after a State Visit of Chinese Leaders to a Texas range ( Deng wearing a cowboy hat), then the Soviet Leader advertised for Pizza Hut, sitting in the back of a limousine.

Bang! No more Cold War. Only hot food.

Berlin Walls down. Firewalls up.  Mainframe on Main Street, albeit smaller and smarter.

Our expectations have gone through multiple adjustments: fast food and fast divorce, financing and financial rescue (individual and institutional level; fiscal cliff?)

Nuclear families melt down, just as nuclear reactors did (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Neil Young now grows old (Old Man Looks at my Life…) but Bob Seger is Still The Same.

Yoko Ono exhibits  John Lennon’s Art Works, instead of hers.

So we adapted. Bob Dylan said we always reinvented the past, because the Present and Future are both unknown.

Shirley Maclaine would vehemently disagree. She went all the way, claiming to have married with the Roman Emperor himself, albeit in his  reincarnated version as a Swedish prime minister.

What do I make of all these forward/backward worldviews? I have been told to keep my head down (slurping my cup-a-noodle?). Don’t think much. Then I heard the music “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”.

Then I start being futuristic: electric vehicles, solar energy and stem cells.

Those unknowns are fascinating. They bring new designs to auto and home building industries. They bring new jobs.

New hope.

America in the late 50’s had its mojo.

For those who are not afraid to set high goals, beyond just marriage, career and health, the future belongs to them.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Think different. Je pense. Rodin’s statue of the Thinker could use some imagination ( sitting on a newly designed toilet seat, for instance)

Bill Gates is trying to do just that. Now, he starts to pick up from his friend Steve Jobs, some diversion thinking. The future belongs to those who are not completely satisfied with what now exists. Contentment or progress? Keep your head down or look up to the stars? Busy with Moon walk (Michael Jackson) or Mars Rover?

Your choice. I was just thinking out loud. It would be nice to have you join us. Imagine. And the world will be one.