Back to the future

This isn't virtue. It isn't wisdom. It isn't something I learned in a classroom.

It is simply the way my mind works.

I have never been particularly good at referencing the past or projecting myself into the future in the way many people do. Because of that, my experience of "time travel" is different from most people's.

Many people can reference their past and use it to construct a future. They have files they can pull from—college degrees, family histories, résumés, accomplishments, certifications, awards, and experiences. These files become building blocks for tomorrow.

Of course, files can work both ways.

A criminal record, a painful divorce, a history of addiction, a business failure, or a mistake made years ago can also become files that shape a person's future.

In many ways, this is a form of time travel.

We continuously visit the past and use it to build stories about the future. Some of those stories are true. Some are imagined. Some are hopeful. Some are terrifying.

But all of them influence the identity we carry forward.

This morning, I surrendered the topic to the way my mind naturally operates.

I am neurologically wired in a way that makes it difficult for me to store and retrieve the past like a filing cabinet. Because of that, I experience life differently.

My perceptions tend to arrive as large blocks of conceptual understanding. They are sourced more from emotion, intuition, and feeling than from documented references, diplomas, or neatly organized records.

This way of perceiving the world was once more common.

Long before databases, résumés, and digital archives, knowledge was often carried through stories. Mystics, sages, elders, storytellers, medicine men, and wise women transmitted understanding through experience rather than documentation.

Many of those storytellers became trapped by the same thing that traps us today:

The ego.

The ego is a remarkable time machine.

It launches me backward into yesterday and projects me forward into tomorrow.

Yet both destinations often turn out to be illusions.

The past becomes a story.

The future becomes a fantasy.

Neither exists in the way my mind insists they do.

As I sat contemplating this topic, I realized that this form of time travel contains both tremendous beauty and tremendous danger.

Let's start with the past.

When the storyteller of the past is guided by the Four Horsemen of the ego—fear, selfishness, dishonesty, and self-seeking ambition—the stories become distorted. The ego wants credit. It wants blame. It wants to be right. It wants an identity built from things that have already come and gone.

But when the past is viewed through compassion, humility, forgiveness, and faith, it becomes one of humanity's greatest teachers.

Perhaps the value of the past is not in building an identity.

Perhaps its value is in revealing wisdom.

Today we stand at a remarkable crossroads.

Technology has given us unprecedented access to information. We can analyze the past at a scale never before imaginable. Artificial intelligence can process oceans of data in seconds.

The question is not whether we can travel through time.

The question is whether we will do so with wisdom.

Will we create a utopia?

Or a dystopia?

The answer depends entirely on the spirit guiding the journey.

Then there is the future.

What fascinates me most is that we now possess technology capable of predicting, forecasting, modeling, and suggesting outcomes for events that have not yet occurred.

How could this not be a pivotal moment in human evolution?

We stand in a doorway.

On one side is a future guided by wisdom, compassion, and service.

On the other side is a future guided by fear, control, division, and power.

Technology itself is neither good nor evil.

It is a tool.

But a tool without a soul can become dangerous.

A society unable to distinguish truth from illusion may eventually worship the tool itself.

And that thought followed me as I prepared to hitch my Airstream to my truck this morning.

I travel in a curious way.

I pick a small highway heading in a direction that feels interesting, and then I simply drive.

As the miles roll beneath the tires, topics arrive.

Stories arrive.

Concepts arrive.

Most of them cannot be referenced in a book. They aren't sourced from a classroom or a research paper.

They simply blow into my awareness like tumbleweeds crossing an open desert.

Sometimes one catches on a fence.

When it does, I stop and write.

I don't know where the story came from.

I don't know where it is going.

And when the wind changes, it moves on.

I could never tell the same story twice.

That is both the gift and the challenge of being a storyteller.

Ironically, the very technology that now allows me to share these thoughts is also a kind of time machine.

It helps me transcend limitations that once made writing difficult. It gives me a voice. It allows me to share ideas that might otherwise remain trapped inside my head.

Yet this same technology, if used without wisdom, could become one of the greatest dangers humanity has ever faced.

And so I return to the thought that woke me this morning:

Back to the Future.

Perhaps the title itself points to a misunderstanding.

Maybe there is no such thing as time travel.

Maybe time has nowhere to go.

Maybe everything we seek is already here.

The spiritual principles that matter most—love, honesty, trust, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, humility, faith—exist only in the present moment.

They are not waiting in the future.

They are not trapped in the past.

They live here.

Now.

This is where true power exists.

This is where true happiness exists.

The Four Horsemen of the ego will always attempt to pull us away from this moment. They ride on fear, resentment, selfishness, and dishonesty. They forge weapons from yesterday and aim them toward tomorrow.

But the Warrior of Love walks a different path.

The Tumbleweed Warrior is not called to conquer the future.

He is called to inhabit the present.

He is called to listen more than he speaks.

To love more than he judges.

To serve more than he seeks recognition.

To sit beside the lost soul rather than lecture from a mountaintop.

If there is a foundation sturdy enough to support the future of humanity, it will not be built from yesterday's victories or tomorrow's promises.

It will be built from the spiritual principles we practice today.

One moment at a time.

One act of kindness at a time.

One conversation at a time.

One human being at a time.

So as I hitch my Airstream this morning and roll toward another unknown destination, I leave you with this thought:

There is nothing behind me that has my best interest.

There is nothing ahead of me that has my best interest.

Only this moment does.

Only now.

Perhaps there is no Back to the Future.

Perhaps there is only the sacred gift of being fully present.

And perhaps that is the greatest adventure of all.

— The Tumbleweed Warrior
June 18, 2026