What will the future become? That is a question that has no answers. We strong blend feelings for the future. It is so full of hope and possibilities. Everything we haven’t done can be done in the future. Something which makes you an human being, is that you can imagine the future. You use this capability every day, often without thinking of it. You make plans for the next day, next week or even next year. You are able to guess how the close future will become, and sooner or later you will force yourself to think haw the future shall become years ahead. That is what you do when you get an education, buy a place to live and find someone to grow old with.

The future is an unknown land. We can rave about the future. Some people imagine war, pollution, crimes and frightening things that could happen in the future. But we all would like a world with peace, happiness, friendships and technology. The ability to think about the future gives us a footstep in preference to every animal on the globe. That is one of the reasons why the human being is the dominating animal species on the earth today. But that also gives us many sorrows, because think of all the unpleasant and terrifying that could happen in the future. We know that it contains many perils. We know that all the people we love, and our selves, will die in the future. But some people don’t even care about the great, distant future. But that is probably understandable because why do we have to think what’s going to happen in about 500 years? We have already died before then!

But that concern us, whether we like it or not. Just think of it; the people who live now, have an enormous influence on the future. The choices we do, will decide very much how people are going to live in about a hundred, or perhaps in thousands years ahead. We have the same power over the future as the people in the past have over us. It was the past which decided which language we talk now and which religion that is most enlarged. Even small thinks, as the appearance of the letters you read on this page, were decided by the people in the past. We are the futures past. We live in what the people would call “old days” in a hundred years. What we do today will influence the way people live in the future.

That is why environmental organisations invite us to think about the future when we choose haw we are living. Something simple as the garbage problem affects the future. Many types of plastic can “survive” over hundred of years, and if we don’t do anything about this garbage, maybe the people in the future have to. The garbage chutes are only one of the problems the future can inherit.  Today we live on a planet which is pretty much explored. It is not possible to expeditions, like people did until the beginning of the 19th century. The earth is too overcrowded, the nature is too damaged, and it’s noting room for adventures. But in the future everything can happen, we all just have to wait and live our lives.