A realist will say “only stick to what is really there”; keep your head in the present, ignore the future and the past, for “yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery and today is a gift.” But that begs the question…what is “really” there?
When I look at my water bottle, it isn’t just an object in the present; in me “seeing” it, I see my past experiences of using water bottles, that leads to my expectation of what I can possibly do with a water bottle. If I tried to pick it up and it was glued to the table, I would be shocked, because this isn’t how I usually encounter water bottles. I perceive the future, I perceive possibility every day when I pick up my water bottle; if I didn’t, such a bare object would be quite confusing when I encounter it, but water bottles are not confusing the last time I checked.
The realist thinks it is fairy-tale to “keep your head in the clouds” and think of dreams and possibility. But that is how the realist drives her car every day. By perceiving and expecting possibilities. By perceiving possibility. The realist has things mixed up. Where she thinks realism is closest to the present, and to what actually “is.” That couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the present, we perceive possibility, the past and the future are woven into the present; how else do we get better at a skill. At first a bike scared me, now I perceive a means of fluid movement, something I can actually grasp just looking at it.
Hope, expectation, dreaming, possibility-ing, is not what has to be purged for our leaders to see clearly; instead, what is in need of purge is the dogma that we experience our life in a series of unconnected notes rather than a specious melody, with past, present and future entangled together to create that familiar sound that we mistakenly call “the present.”
So, dream my dear realist friend, dream like you do every time you pick up a water bottle.
