Navigating the Future

I love ballooning. You can change height easily enough, but you have to find a place where the wind is blowing the way you want to go to change direction. Meteorology helps but has no guarantees. And, of course, you're never quite sure where you're going to land. Ballooning requires acts of faith, training, teamwork, and luck, and the only reason to do it is for its joy. It seems like an appropriate metaphor for our lives right now.

Sometimes, in our day to day lives, we do things so automatically that we don't even notice we're doing it. We ignore the weather and the wind. 

I spend a lot of time talking with people and considering what is happening around us, what's disappearing, what's emerging and what it means. The short answer is that we are confused. We sense that the way we used to work is ending, that what is replacing it is unclear and evolving and that the existential challenges we face are frightening. We're flying over the cloud of confusion.

It is a time when we should be ta…