Tomorrow has the potential to be a fantastic place. No one can ever really be certain about what tomorrow will bring, but the possibilities may seem endless. Now it's true that today can be a pretty good indicator of what's going to happen the next day. Sometimes though we have no idea what's in store for us. For some that can be a great source of hope. Tomorrow might be a little bit brighter. Tomorrow could reveal the answers we're looking for. No matter what happens today, tomorrow will come. The promise that the days will continue on regardless can be something of a lifeline for people to hold onto, giving them just enough strength to make it through today.
While it's true that tomorrow can be a promise of better things, it doesn't always deliver or live up to our expectations. Take a look at old movies or books and you can see how people dreamed the world of tomorrow would be. Flying cars, colonies on the moon, or robots doing our chores for us (ok the Roomba is close on that one). Some of these ideas are more fantastical than others, but they all held out hope that by the time we got to this point things would be better. Now I'm not saying that things are disappointing because yesterday's tomorrow doesn't live up to the expectation. It's just that it makes one wonder what stopped us from living the dream. Were those ideas about what could come next so far off because they were based on incomplete information? Did we see what was already a reality and built on it in such a way that it would be impossible to achieve?
Back in the mid-80s people liked to believe that by 2005 we'd have major technological advancements, but if you compare the world of 1985 with today it's really not all that different. At least not in the way that we expected. Computers are faster and smaller. Still the general idea about the computer is relatively the same though. It's a series of circuit boards processing 1s and 0s. Today's computers may have more processors and memory, however, they're still doing the same exact thing, just better. The automobile hasn't managed to get off the ground and still runs on gasoline. It can get miles to the gallon and they're generally safer, but a car from twenty-five years ago could sit next to one that was built today and get the same general results.
Nostalgia is all about looking back fondly on the past. We remember how things used to be and maybe make them out to be greater than they actually were. In the end though the past is just a memory. It's already happened and the only thing we can do is hang onto what was. With the future though it's anyone's guess how things will actually turn out. It's that bit of the unknown that keeps us moving forward. We don't know how things will be so we are only limited by what we can dream up. Now like a lot of dreams, reality may not always get there. At least not on the timetable that we'd like. Someday we may have flying cars, but it's more likely that tomorrow we'll have something completely different. The idea of a flying car will seem antiquated. The holdover from the past's vision of the future. Fifty years from now the things we're dreaming up today may seem like quaint ideas based on the little information we have now. The differences between yesterday and today can seem both small and great at the same time. For some it may seem as though the promise of tomorrow wasn't fulfilled. For others it's just the beginning. Tomorrow isn't so much a destination, but an idea to always be traveled towards.
