Should I Answer the Call? - May 10 2026

 

Should I Answer the Call?

May 10 2026

Most predictions are wrong.

Except that the future always come true

and by then it seems inevitable.

Is it foolish to try?

Does the here-and-now not suffice?

Is life a lottery

for folks who like to take a chance

but also find gambling

too dicey by far?

There are many forms of augury.

Tea leaves

observing the stars

an outstretched palm.

Not to mention the darker arts

like conjuring the dead

and the reading of entrails.

Then there’s premonition, intuition, straws in the wind,

tables of statistics

the prophecies in scripture

crystal balls.

I prefer to keep it small.

No great men,

no seismic shifts

in social conditions 

or human consciousness.

Just what’s for breakfast 

which socks to wear

should I answer the call.

Or even get out of bed?

With the possibility there

that I can hold it off

at least a few hours;

that the here-and-now

which was once in my future

still is,

a simple prediction

that fulfills itself. 

Thought it would be fun to riff on the idea of prediction. I wanted to make it less linear and more whimsical than my usual stuff. I think I succeeded. 

I immediately recalled the quote attributed to Yogi Berra (even though he never said it!): “It’s tough to make predictions. Especially about the future.” So I was careful about committing the same redundancy in my opening line, especially when my first impulse was to write “predictions about the future”!

We talk about “the” future as if it’s not only singular but almost inevitable. But, of course, there are infinite possibilities:  many futures (plural), but — of course — only one of which will come true. (Or, if there really are multiple universes and quantum probability, that should be amended to say only one of which will come true “for us”.) 

I chose the title because it’s suggestive of those fateful forks in the road that determine a vastly different future:  a phone call, for example, you may have chosen not to answer. 

No great men refers to the “Great Man Theory”:  that history is primarily shaped by exceptional individuals born with innate leadership qualities. The competing theory has it that great individuals emerge from societal conditions, not vice versa. To me, the first seems more random and unpredictable; while the second suggests that one could more reliably map out the future as a more coherent chain of cause and effect. So if Hitler hadn’t appeared, would someone similar have simply filled his role, dictated not by personality but rather the inexorable tides of history? I tend to favour the great man (and now woman) theory. The second seems too deterministic, too settled. Because prediction, as I wrote, is almost always wrong, confounded by contingency and event. Not to mention nature. (What dinosaur on the prehistoric version of 24 hour cable news (where opinion too often masquerades as news) would have predicted a devastating meteor impact? Did anyone in Pompeii anticipate the volcano suddenly erupting?)