text: Where do you see yourself standing in the future, they ask? To them, I say, What are we doing to make a future? Everyone is caught up wondering what the future will look like, but have you ever stopped for a minute to think about what is being done in the present? If calling today a gift is why we call it the present and yesterday changes to history, what becomes of tomorrow? We live in a world of constant fear, wondering if we will live to see the light of tomorrow. No, not you. You aren't born into the families who are left to suffer the pain of corrupt politicians who fled from justice and let their country slip into the hands of terrorism and destruction. You aren't one of those who are forced to choose between family and freedom because here you are lavishly enjoying the presence of both. You don't have to beg on the streets to feed your family for just one meal. You aren't forced to eat dirt or leaves just to stay alive. All you have to do is drive to the nearest fast food venue and casually eat a meal worth someone's monthly income after sleepless nights and fatiguing days. You don't have to watch your daughters being raped by militants or sold as sex slaves. You don't have to watch your sons being murdered in cold blood right in front of your eyes or see their bodies amputated to gain sympathy on the streets for the sake of money. Have you ever really thought about how someone who grew up living in an unstable, life-threatening, always on the run, financially weak household would feel if he or she could live your lifestyle for just one day? For them, it would be a miracle sent from God. Ask them what you see in the future and then ask yourself the same question, will we continue like this until we reach the end? You are the ones who are delusional. The big promises and sanguine words to bring revolutionary change are just ways of claiming power, an old tactic to create illusionary pictures in people's minds. This is what is happening, and you expect me to be hopeful for the future? For so long, we've worried about climate change, and I realize it's still there. How can we help Earth? We can do this by halting the pollution that harms air quality, oceans, groundwater, and soils. We can do this by protecting creation - protecting the forests and natural wildlife populations. The vandalism of Earth is everyone's business, and we need to preserve our ecosystems. Money is manmade, creation is God-given, life is sacred. Our environment determines our social evolution; our social development determines our biological evolution. The need to develop a loving and kind environment that supports populations enables our brains to develop in healthy ways, promoting our empathy, logic, self-control, and ability to be a member of a socially complex species has never been more urgent. Nature has programmed us to nurture for a good reason. Without the richness of the forests, we'd all be broke. We need their leaves to stay, for their roots to hold firm the very ground we walk. Yet this relationship with the trees is so much more than need. For in the company of trees, embedded into the ecology is the soul's coziness, a sense of home, a pure sense of loving joy, instead of sudden changes that could easily be undone, developed methods in every arena that produced a better, more ethical, more wholesome result with each cycle. Whether it was education or medical care, industrial processes, or agriculture, every system was designed to become less polluting and give better results yearly. I've been waiting for, praying for, some kind of top-down change, but now I know it won't happen that way. We're fooling ourselves if we think it will. We'll be watching some stupid reality show or playing computer games the moment the Earth goes past the tipping point and into an unstoppable greenhouse effect. We'll still be frightened by the news and placating ourselves with chemical-laden junk food in pretty boxes, wrapped in plastic, of course. We'll still be chasing that lifestyle we've been groomed for from childhood to crave, that life equals consumption, success equals consumption. We'll admire a system with no more morals than "rich is good," and you can do "whatever you can get away with" to accumulate more money than you can ever spend - while others starve. With no change, we'll continue to sacrifice our own children to the "daycare" system and then feel stressed when our damaged kids "act out." We won't even stop to dwell on the fact that our minors' number one cause of death is suicide - yes, children killing themselves. And for the record, that means our culture - the one we accept so passively - killed them. I can't live with that, not anymore, and if you're being honest with yourself instead of swallowing the "I don't care," "I'm too busy to care" party line, then you'll know you can't either. Changing the world was never going to be a task for one person or one type of mind; we are born different for a reason. The creative minds dreamed up new possibilities, new futures, new technologies. The technological minds made many of the dreams and visions into realities. Humanity put a man on the moon in 1969, makes computers tiny enough to go in a pocket, and has mapped the human genome. Still, we can't think of more than two flawed and extremist political systems to run the world? Why don't we fight hard to stop starvation and inequity? Why don't we innovate? Why don't we think? We have everything to gain, our planet to save. Why do we perpetually stagnate on the issues that really matter? There's an inner angel in us all, and finding it was the key to fixing our global mess. Change is always a leap of faith, and it takes an iron will combined with a heart of pure love to do it. Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward. We can't expect to live in a future with new advanced high-tech innovations, flying cars, or robots when we have real crises to deal with in the present. The future is now. The future is us and how we chose to write it. Everyone has their own story of how they want to see the future, but mine is live the present to get a glimpse of how you would like to see your future growth. The time is now. Because once upon a time, I believed in a hopeful future. Don't let Earth slip into doom. Don't waste a day, spend each wisely.