Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

Last week, I was driving one morning in a busy avenue in Denver when I noticed a small car driving in the opposite direction and making some kind of signals with the headlights. In fact, both the driver and the passenger were moving their arms as if they were trying to say something. I laughed at the whole situation and promptly discarded, until I saw the police.

Just a few blocks after the extremely short encounter with the driver making gestures, there was a police officer on my side of the street, clearly waiting for speeders. (I don’t think he caught any speeders, because speeding at that time and location it’s impossible.)

However, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that somebody tried to alert me about a “danger” in my future and about the fact that, for whatever reason, I did not understand that message.

In my analysis, the other driver tried to tell me something that he just saw (that is, at the time of our “meeting,” the problem was in his past) and that I was about to see (that is, the problem was still in my future). Yet, he could only share that information in the instantaneously gone moment of the present, when I was not expecting to receive any such a message. So, I misunderstood the message and I mistakenly discarded it.

I wonder how many more messages (perhaps even alerting me about obstacles on my path) I also misunderstood and discarded because they were brief, unusual, or unexpected.

How many other lessons from somebody else’s past relevant to my future I have already forgotten due to my inability to receive them or understand them?

It is true that the driver trying to alert me about the officer waiting for speeders was not talking only to me, but to any other driver using the road I was using that morning. And it is also true that there were no words in our communication, but signals made with lights and arm gestures.

Yet, in spite of all those circumstances at the moment of the transmission of the message, I missed the meaning of the message and I only understood what the driver was trying to tell me when it was too late to change “my future,” that is, only when I saw the police officer.

This time, nothing bad happened. But what could happen if I had decided to ignore an important message, thus causing grave consequences? And what can I do to be sure that I will neither misunderstand nor discard any more message about my future?

Perhaps everything that happens in our lives is a signal from the future, not only in the sense of being a message from somebody else’s past, but in the sense of signals coming from the future, as some scientists and philosophers say.

Also, what kind of signals or teachings, intentionally or not, I am leaving for those whose future I represent? Perhaps that’s the responsible question to ask.