Top Highlights

• But something did shift that night as we went from years with 19’s to those with 20’s. All the looking forward slowed down. The leaning into the future became more of standing up into the present. People stopped thinking about where things were going and started to consider where things were.
• When people stop looking to the future, they start looking at the present.
• “The story—from Rapunzel to War and Peace—is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”2
• Experiencing the world as a series of stories helps create a sense of context. It is comforting and orienting. It helps smooth out obstacles and impediments by recasting them as bumps along the way to some better place—or at least an end to the journey. As long as there’s enough momentum, enough forward pull, and enough dramatic tension, we can sus...
• We all became futurists in one way or another, peering around the corner for the next big thing, and the next one after that. But then we actually got there. Here. Now. We arrived in the future. That’s when the story really fell apart, and we began experiencing our first true symptoms of present shock.