The Future is Falling

Tell this story to someone you love, and let them know they can fly too.

This story came to me in the lucid space between sleep and dreams, inspired by the origin story of the Haudenosaunee, First Nations peoples in northeast North America.

When I first read this myth, called Skywoman Falling at the beginning of Robin Waller Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, I was unwilling to accept the gift of her story; after only a page or so, I closed the book and put it away.

I find it hard to recognise the me who felt unable to open up to new forms of knowing, only a handful of years ago. It’s been quite a journey.

But, trusting the many people who celebrated the magic in Braiding Sweetgrass I returned only a couple of weeks later in a different headspace and found myself captivated.

I now credit Braiding Sweetgrass as one of, if not the, most powerfully transformational books I have ever read. And, as a bookseller, I read a lot.

Much more recently, in a later stage of my journey, whilst watching regenerative guru Giles Hutchins describe the unfolding evolutionary purpose of humanity, I found myself compelled by the science but longing for a story to give it wings.

The Future is Falling is a bridge between this scientific knowledge and a more spiritual longing. It’s written as a children’s story and I hope to have it illustrated and published some day, but it will speak to anyone with an awareness of this moment.

Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

I’m going to let you into a secret…

Once upon a time, long before aeroplanes were invented, humans could fly!  

We flew gently with the winds, gliding gracefully over the land.  

But, as time went by we thought it would be easier if something else did the flying for us, and we called that The Future.  

In The Future we could fly further, faster and higher. High enough to even reach other planets!

So, we started building The Future packed with every technological gizmo and invention we could imagine.

And she did fly.  

And she did go far.  

And fast.  

And, oh, so very high.  

So, we kept building and began loading everything that was precious to us inside her.

But eventually, we weighed The Future down.  

She started falling.  

The humans wondered what we could do to keep The Future flying.  

So, we started tinkering, adding a new engine here or an extra wing there.  

But still, The Future was falling.  

Photo by Tomáš Malík on Unsplash

Around this time, some people rediscovered the old stories about us flying.  

Slowly, with lots of imagination and many bumpy landings, some of us even began flying again.  

Not very many, and not very high at first.  

But high enough to fly up to The Future.  

And just enough people to start unloading the most valuable things, to save for everyone else. 

By now, The Future was low enough in the sky that everyone on Earth could see she was falling.

And see the people flying around her, offloading the most treasured things.  

Photo Fraser Morrison on Flickr

As they watched, the humans on the ground remembered that they could fly too.

They began taking off in great billowing clouds; laughing as they flocked together, murmuring glorious shapes in the sky.

And just like that, they remembered what it was to be truly human, floating as effortless as an eagle on a mountain updraft.  

Then they each flew up to The Future and recovered their most beloved things.  

And now, freewheeling through the clouds carrying only the things they really needed, the humans realised that the thing they had built wasn’t really the future after all.  

The future was them.

And they were happy.

So, no one noticed when The Future crashed to earth in an unlovely pile.

Post Script - One of the treasures offloaded from The Future was the gift of storytelling. Tell this story to someone you love and let them know they can fly too.

And tell me, in the comments, what other treasures do we need to offload from The Future?