My heart longs for a future that’s more real to me than the dim past

By David McElroy · February 13, 2021

I sometimes remember the future very clearly.

That notion violates everything we think we know about the world. We remember the past. We imagine the future. Everybody knows that.

But, still. Something in my heart remembers the future — and the truth of that future is often more clear to me — more real — than my memories of the past.

There are two parts of me and it’s hard to say which is the real me. One part of me has his feet firmly planted in the material reality around me. The other part sees and feels and experiences something beyond all that — but it’s vague and murky, as though I’m seeing it through a heavy fog.

The first part of me is grounded in “common sense” and in the material reality which we grow up learning about. But the second part of me — the part of me which consistently sees the woman and our home and my children — is grounded somewhere between spooky mysticism and the mysteries of quantum mechanics.

“Why do we remember the past, but not the future?” physicist Stephen Hawking once asked.

Quantum mechanics suggests that the future already exists. Common sense says that’s nonsense. My heart can’t argue about physics, but I long for a future I’ve already seen.

I see her eyes. It’s not like a photograph or a video. It’s more like a piece of impressionistic art.

There’s intelligence and drive and intensity in the eyes. They’re always light-colored. I call them blue, but I suppose they could be gray or green or something similar. There’s life in her eyes. There’s also pain. I don’t know why. And something else that’s hard to describe. Maybe longing. It could be longing to be truly loved, but I might be reading too much into that.

I can see her shoulders. Her arms. The texture of her skin. It’s not that it’s perfect. It’s simply that it’s her. Everything about her is like that. It’s not about her being perfect. It’s simply about her being her — being who she is.

I see a light and airy home. I can’t describe it in material terms, because it’s more of an impression. I feel colors and feelings — a certain musicality — in the home. It’s not as though I’m seeing the colors of the paint on the walls or furniture. It’s more like there’s color and emotions in the light and in the atmosphere of the home.

It’s a house, but I have trouble calling it anything but a home.

It feels more like the primordial Home — with a capital letter — the place where I belong and which is the source of life and love. I’ve never experienced Home in real life — not the sort I’m talking about here — but that’s what this is. For me, it’s a mythical place that I’ve seen only when I’ve briefly touched upon something that feels like the collective unconscious which psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote about.

I can close my eyes and put myself into this home. I can see the woman. I can see and smell and touch the children. I feel the love and I feel the powerful sense of beauty there.

But then I open my eyes — and I’m right back in this material world.

I call this “real life,” but I can’t say for sure which version of life is truly real. Those around me would call this real life — what I see when my physical eyes are open.

The woman isn’t here. I don’t know where she is. The children don’t exist yet. The house might or might not be there, but it certainly isn’t our home. Not yet.

I live alone — with one beautiful dog and three aging cats — in a house which had only one redeeming feature. It was a cheap foreclosure. It was a good place to park my worldly goods almost six years ago while I figured out what was going to happen next.

I still haven’t figured out what happens next, so I’m still here.

When I used to work in politics and I made a lot of money, I would have been ashamed to live here. It’s embarrassing to admit that I was so prideful. I’ve grown tremendously over the last decade. I’ve had to learn humility and patience. I’ve had to accept that I wasn’t as great as I had assumed I was.

But I see this loving Home for my future. I know this woman, but I don’t quite really know her. I know that future. I know it’s real, despite what material realists would tell me.

I don’t live really here. I’m parked here. It’s as though the world has stopped for me. Time has stopped. I’m waiting. I don’t know exactly what I’m waiting for. As I said recently, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

The only thing I know for certain is that it already exists.

She exists. That place exists. Home. Children. Love. Light and creation.

I haven’t seen them yet, but I remember that future very clearly. I know it’s waiting for me. Somewhere.

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Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

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