Angry Confusion Sets In?

Today, for reasons I cannot even begin to explore - or at least, ought not to speculate on in a public forum - the school was full of people coming up to me and asking me when I would have time to go out for coffee and chat. Some sounded most upset; some sounded as if their favourite hamster had just given birth to geckos. A few asked why everyone seemed so distraught, unhappy, angry, bewildered. Another person thought that things were confusing, one implied I must be confused if I thought a certain way.

But I must say that I have always possessed a lot more clarity of thought in the long-term, in the kind of vision which spans five years to ten years ahead. I suppose I must be one of those cursed with long-sightedness. Sometimes, my strategic vision is very bad at assessing short-term problems and obstacles. Yet, trawling through the thousands of things I've written in the 20 years of my public career, I realise that what I need to work on is bridging the gap between 'now' and 'five years from now'. I have never been wrong so far about 'five years from now'.

I say this with painful humility, because I never noticed this before. It is like a gift that operates under your radar. You don't know you have it. But people keep pointing things out to you. One young man, a former student, came to see me a few weeks ago to tell me that five years ago, when I told him to make a particularly cold-blooded career choice, I was right in the end. He thanked me for the advice, and wondered how I had seen so far ahead.

I don't know. It is a gift. And now I know I have it, I have to be even more careful about what I do, think or say. The future is bright - I must say that it always is, until we tarnish it; the best is yet to be, but sometimes it has not yet been conceived and hence is in no condition to be born. So we work for the best, in whatever estate, high or low, that God has ordained for us. And indeed, may it come to pass someday.