The Future Is Not Reasonable

The future is not reasonable. How CAN it be?
Your reasons are based in what you know and what you understand. The future is not. What is emerging now is not just beyond your reason. It’s beyond reason. The age of reason is over. Sense-making can no longer be based on what you know. But what can it be based on?

In 2020 at least a fifth of the workforce will be engaged in jobs that do not exist today, addressing needs and problems not identified as yet and applying technologies that have not even been thought about yet. A sense-making function based on what you know is a dead-ender. You cannot expect to reason your way out of change, crisis or chaos. The future is unthinkable. It is unreasonable. And yes, it is unbelievable.

Problems and opportunities do not present themselves as givens. They show up from seemingly unconnected dynamics and from shape-shifting circumstances and puzzling, unrelated continuums. You cannot reason your way through a rapidly shape-shifting picture. You engage, you inquire to open doors to discover and to participate, learn, acquiesce and co-create.

Entitlement is a brick wall washed away by the flood of a new day. Yesterday’s rationale is not permission granting in a new now. What was is different. Your task is to find now, to discover how you are different in it.

The future is not reasonable. You cannot unlock it with history. You cannot manage it through pride. Change happens in the blink on an eye. It happens during sleep. You go to sleep in one world and wake up in another. The answer is not about never going to sleep. It is to be fully alert and engaged when you are awake. And then, it is to keep one eye or your mind’s eye open when you are asleep. Every day you wake up to a new and different world. Yesterday has no entitlement today. Today is not its continuation. It is not an overrun of yesterday. Today appears out from seemingly nowhere. It is a tomorrow that has been unveiled.

You become a shape-shifter inside a shape-shifting change, not to surrender your core but to become mutable and adaptive in your methods and ways. Your core values, capabilities, talent, passion and purpose are not invalid. They are more important than ever. They are your glue for tomorrow, your future bound viscosity. It’s the delivery system and engagement format that needs updating. Think RNA instead of DNA. As the world around you changes you need to RNA yourself anew inside it.

© Aviv Shahar