David McElroy

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.

Keep Reading

It was just a fleeting part of a dream, but it’s been bothering me for the last couple of days. It had been a happy dream until that moment. I dreamed that I was married and had a family, although I don’t know who my wife was. We were all at home. Everything was normal and good.

Then all of a sudden, I realized that my wife was disappointed in me — and I felt ashamed of myself.

She wasn’t even in the room, but I somehow felt her disapproval. I had let her down. I was fat, even though she had expected me to get into better shape. I wasn’t as successful as she wanted me to be. I wasn’t as ambitious as she wanted me to be. I wasn’t who she hoped I would be.

In that moment, I feared that I could never be good enough for her. And then I woke up.

Keep Reading

The world is out of focus for me tonight. It’s fuzzy. Unclear. Like looking through a camera lens that’s covered with raindrops.

The problem isn’t the world. The problem is in my head. Or in my heart. It’s hard to say. I just know I’m the problem. The world is still just as dysfunctional as ever, but it’s no different than it always is. The change is in me.

I didn’t enjoy dinner tonight. I didn’t enjoy the company I had. There was nothing wrong with the food. There was nothing wrong with the woman with whom I ate. But nothing felt right. Everything felt wrong.

I don’t know what I want.

There’s an empty feeling gnawing at me. I want something, but what? My life has always been centered around the answers to these questions. What do I want? What do I need? What am I trying to accomplish? Whose love am I trying to win? And now?

I don’t know what I want.

Keep Reading