What Do You Imagine a Time Machine Would Look Like?
We all have imagination.
Every one of us has a picture in our mind of what the future will be like. We can all imagine ourselves, our family, and our community, in the future.
What you see is what you move toward.
It’s like a magnet.
So how do we picture the shape of things to come? – do we rise higher, do we live in abundance, or do we picture it struggling, defeated, depleted – divided, and in decline.
The IMAGE we imagine will determine what kind of future we have.
If our imagination is limited our future will be limited.
Before we reach our dreams we have to imagine them. We have to have a clear goal in mind.
That’s what art and artists can help us with.
Trudi, told us that after having 50 years to think about it, what she took away from Woodstock is that
WE HAVE TO STAY AWAY from things that divide us.
Dr. Bob says it simply. We are one people.
I don’t think there’s ever been a time these messages were more important.
Let me make an argument. There was a survey recently that asked Americans if they thought things we getting better or worse. What do think the consensus was?
Worse.
But I’d like to reimagine that. The truth is – by the numbers – the world has never been more healthy, peaceful or well fed. There are more people living more peacefully today than ever in the history of the planet. And we know that. But the thing is we can imagine more and better still. It’s not that things are getting worse, it’s that we’re all getting our hopes up for more peace, more health, more prosperity.
We’re all imagining that we can all do better. And that together we can all look after the planet better.
That’s what changed in the Woodstock era.
We got our hopes up.
What do you imagine a real time machine would look like?
For the past three years I’ve been traveling in this one.
It travels back by going forward.
That's what I learned on the trip. Woodstock was all about getting our hopes up. Getting our hopes up in a way way that no one in history had before. Imagining change is possible.
The Light Bus has taken me back to place where I could see that a sense of shared purpose – a search - can bring people together. A place where I learned that together our capacity for effort is so much more than we imagine. A place where I learned a funny thing about love – the more you share it around, the more you have.
It’s the wings I noticed first.
With wings we might fly.
That’s what this bus is at first glance.
It’s a flight from sadness.
Completely incompatible with melancholy.
It has a humane almost classical moderation.
It can carry rockers and realists, socialists and senators all equally well. And while you’re in it the world is breaking someone else’s heart. It is freedom in machine form.
Today we call the hippies and flower children of the Woodstock era - grandma - and grandpa.
Their voices are passing away –
back to stardust and golden oldies.
But over the jangling guitars the message is clear - we can imagine more and better – for ourselves, for the rising generation and especially for - the poorest and most vulnerable among us in the world - who remain on the outside looking in.
The world is not pushing against us. it’s dreaming of us.
We’re not behind – we’re on the very cutting edge of the first mature democracy in history – and we have to imagine what happens next.
Look at this bus.
It’s audacious. It’s bombastic. It’s not nostalgia.
It is the story of the future.
I’m filled with that sort of wild activist optimism,
that the ideas and ideals symbolized on this bus can carry us back to a place we’ve never actually been - a place we’ve only imagined but long to go again.
Let’s call it… Woodstock.
