The Future Isn't Promised

From the second we come into this world. No, from the moment of our conception, our future is predicted. Our parents laying in bed falling asleep on feathered words with just the correct amount of weight to succumb to slumber as they dream of Our future.

My mum died when I was 12. My dad raised myself and my brother. We only spent some weekends with my mum and I was too young to question. Unequipped to find the words or the inclination to ask how any of this fit in with her dreams of her future. And of my own.

When I turned 35, which was the age my mum died, I struggled to envision my own future. Somehow fearing that I wouldn't have one because she didn't. They say the bond between a child and its mother is unbreakable, however broken. Perhaps, they say these things as a promise, a blanket of comfort to promote this promise of a future.

A few weeks after my 38th birthday we faced a global pandemic. I work for the NHS and find myself battling between what is right and what scares me. I go to work everyday and put my family at risk. My family...a wife, a Cat. I wonder if my Mum envisioned that it would look like that or if she ever wondered at all. I'm fighting for everyone's future. That's what they say. 'Save lives. Protect the NHS. Stay at home.' And the coward in me, the coward that fears for the lives of her family and of her future wonders: Should I stay at home? Will that decision alter my future?

The future is not promised and yet we live each day like it is. Even during a global pandemic we make plans. For what we will do when this is all over. We make promises of change. To do better. Perhaps it is inherent that we cannot simply be. That we cannot simple exist in the moment and live like the future isn't promised. That normalcy is necessary to the human condition. The thought that we can always be better...tomorrow. Takes a lot of the pressure off, right? Tomorrow...I will do better.