Future Self: Teen Zine vol. 5, part 2, chapter 4: future—where are we headed?
Juliette Alvey
When I started kindergarten, the adults got pretty excited about our class being the future “Class of 2000.” In the 80s, the thought of these little snot-nosed kindergarteners graduating high school at the turn of the century brought about all kinds of hope and optimism. Maybe this is why my laminated kindergarten class photo was labeled “Smoke-free Class of 2000.” We were going to be the ones who never smoked (or did anything bad) but instead brought creativity, hope, light, and success to the future.
We were told we could be anything we wanted to be… and in some ways, I really believed that. However, with hope and optimism comes a certain amount of pressure. “You are the future! Don’t let us down! You will be the generation that doesn’t smoke… and perhaps even finds a cure for cancer?”
I would be willing to bet that every single kindergartener in that photo (myself included) has had a moment or two where we wondered, “How did I get here? This is not the future I imagined for myself.” There is so much pressure to be a “success” that it causes me to look at my life now that I’m in my mid-40s and worry I haven’t accomplished all that much, or at least not all that I had hoped for.
Part of this stems from the hyper-focus on “career” that we have here in the United States. Comedian Trevor Noah has a poignant bit about this when he talks about people in France. He says, “If you ask someone in France, ‘What do you do?’ They will answer, [Trevor Noah doing the best French accent ever], ‘Oh, well, uh, I like to go for walks with my friends. I like to eat good food…’” Because our definition of success is almost completely career-based, we minimize the importance of things like being a spouse or parent… or even small things like being a good listener to a random stranger in a store.
Wherever any of us in the “Smoke-free Class of 2000” ended up, our futures probably never looked as dire as a man who hung on a cross beside Jesus. The Bible tells us he was a thief. He was not innocent like the Savior who hung next to him. If he lived in the 1980s, he most definitely would not have been the one all the adults hung their hope on for making the future bright. He was at the end of his life, and as he hung there dying, he may have lost all hope and thought, “How did I get here? This is not the future I imagined for myself.” But as he recognized who was dying next to him, he boldly requested, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Teen Zine vol. 5 (part 2) says, “What does Jesus’s encounter with this contrite thief mean for your future? It means your future life (and all of humanity’s) is defined by the ONE who answers the thief with good news. ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43)” (p. 93).
Paradise! We all dream of paradise, but we don’t know quite how to define it. I believe what Jesus was describing was much more than a Corona commercial where someone sits on a picturesque beach in a chaise lounge. And it is not dependent on how much we accomplish in this life. Teen Zine vol. 5 (part 2) again says, “Remember: On the cross at Calvary, a future was given to a dying thief…” (p. 115).
If God can give a dying thief a future, it doesn’t matter how much or how little (good or bad) we have done. We have a future, and it will be in the presence of the Light of the World, who promises to one day welcome us, too, into paradise.
