The (Non-) Power of Prediction

This is the time of year for predictions. As this past year has shown us, it is so easy to tell what's going to happen in any given year. Not!

Well, Seth Godin makes that point in the following neat post from last week.

I just found this post, lost and forgotten, in the bottom of a folder I was backing up.I meant to publish it in January, 2002, when I started this blog:

Predictions for 2008

I know it's six years away, but I've found that short-term predictions are too easy to make. So, here you go:

• I predict that the number of blogs will explode, to more than a hundred times as many as we have now. If you're an opinion leader, you'll have one.
• A virtually unknown politician, a black man who's father is from Africa, will be elected president, in a landslide. He'll take the office from George W. Bush, leaving with the lowest approval rating of any president in history.
• Fidel Castro will step down.
• People with AIDS will be living longer than ever before, but the disease won't be cured.
• Americans will watch more video online than on TV.
• An earthquake in Myanmar will kill more than 100,000 people and their government will do nothing.
• The economy will be in the middle of a once in a century meltdown.
• Apple will make a cell phone and dominate the MP3 market as well. And the music industry will be in tatters. Napster will fail.
• Starbucks will sputter, but the quality and availability of dark chocolate will get better and better.
• You will know who the governor of Alaska is.
• After six years, Ingrid Betancourt will be rescued.
• Britney Spears will have a hit record.
• I'll have written some more books and will release a goofy action figure to raise money for Acumen.
• China will become the fourth largest economy in the world, but they'll get in trouble for putting poison into milk and toothpaste.
• Google will be the center of the Web.
• Most newspapers will either be on the verge of bankruptcy or considering it.

Sorry to kid. But just think about how impossible it is for your to predict what your life is going to be like in four or six years... being ready for anything is the only rational strategy. So, why exactly are you planning on the future being just like it is now, but with better uniforms?

I love that last question, actually. It is one of the difficulties with life- it never turns out like we expect it to. We plan for the future based on what we know of today and expect it to be the same. But it won't. One of the best characteristics to develop is the ability to flow. Which is what happens when you can fight or flee.

So we have flowed through another year. Life will never again be like it is. For better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health I can promise you that it will change in the next 12 months. Not much we can do about it so I guess we should be ready to go with the flow again, using what we already know about life, applying it to the new and the not so new that will happen.

I add to that the one thing that I am sure of- no matter what. God is still in charge and I am not. With that I can at least get through each day.