Leadership coach Stephen Covey taught 'Begin with the end in mind'; in other words, to envision a finite point, condition, or state of being in the future. The notion was an easy fit for most Western thinkers, but not so with all cultures.
The East African tribal group we lived among did not have words for Covey's idea in their traditional vocabulary. Their future is perhaps three days ahead. Two words express anything past today, Tun' or 'Ta Tun' meaning 'someday' or 'a distant someday'. To define the future as being next week, or in a year, or in 40 years from now is too literal and something of a stretch.
Covey's activity of long-distance goal setting is difficult to translate into Kalenjin thinking. Intelligence is not the difficulty, training is. This people group has not been taught to think in 'terms' of the future. Westerners, accustomed to long distance goal setting, find that envisioning a completed project makes the entire process almost tangible before it exists. However, those not so trained, find the exercise is very intangible, fuzzy, hard to grasp, hard to believe.
I was enjoying my coffee this a.m. and thinking about my future. I was envisioning myself twenty to twenty-five years out when a new thought pressured itself into the conversation, "What will I be like in 10,000 years?"
Setting goals 10,000 years ahead! I'm comfortable setting long term projections as far ahead as the end of my life expectancy, but beyond that I've never set concrete goals or aspirations. I'm much like my African friends in this regard, and things get fuzzy.
I suppose I can compare my dilemma with that of a caterpillar. How can a worm pre-experience flight? Nose to the ground, bloated, grindingly slow movement, wrinkled and fuzz-covered; how can it begin to conjecture winged sailing on the wind, feather-lightness, a sleek colorful body? Yet, believing it or not, this is its certain destiny.
Dream ahead for a few minutes. Look beyond the end of your road. I know it is a stretch, but try. Thinking and planning for that distant someday has been practiced from ancient times. "One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things." (Philippians 3:14-15)
So, this morning I began the practice of long-long-long distance planning. You try it. Go ahead, leap to a gourmet-day ten thousand years away. How old will you be? Who would you like to be there with you? What improvements would want to have realized in yourself? What will you be happy to have behind you? And then.... envision 10,000 years past that. Fuzzy, but you better believe it.
All material copyrighted by Stephen Meeks
