A More Perfect Future

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

We’re back in Boston this week to open the planetarium tour of Utopian Hotline.

For the past five years, we have collected voicemails via a telephone hotline that imagine what a more perfect future might be like for our world.

One of the voicemails featured in the piece is a friend of mine — a poet from Alabama.

In response to the voicemail’s question — “How do you imagine a more perfect future?” — he says:

I met this poet 10 years ago, sitting around a table in Abu Dhabi where we dreamt of our work together. Months later, we were on a plane to Kenya to launch our program Real Global Poets, which brought together students from Alabama and refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia.

He lives by this lesson — “Your voice is your power.”
And in turn, through our 10-year friendship, it’s a question I live with and ask of my students: What is my voice? Where is my power?

This week, as we sit in the darkness in the Boston planetarium and listen to voices from around the world, I’m reminded: the future we imagine is never promised. But the act of imagining — of speaking it out loud — might just be a way of finding our place in it.

Lastly, if you feel called to do so, call 646-694-8050 to leave your message.

What future are you daring to speak into the world today?

A POEM

“First They Came” by Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

Grateful,

Michael