The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. — Paul Valery

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Author: Paul Valery

Insight: We used to believe the future was mostly predictable. Your parents could assume their kids would do better, that technology would keep improving, that institutions would hold. The future was something you could plan toward with reasonable confidence. Now? We're not sure what baseline we're even planning from. Climate shifts, job categories vanish in years not decades, what counted as normal three years ago might never come back. This uncertainty hits differently than old-fashioned anxiety about the unknown. It's not that we lack information—we have more data than ever. It's that the rules themselves seem to be changing. You can do everything "right" and still find the ground has moved. This makes people oscillate between obsessive planning and giving up entirely, between doomscrolling and denial. But here's the thing: acknowledging that the future is fundamentally different now actually frees you from something. If you can't predict the old way, you stop wasting energy trying. Instead, you build the capacity to adapt, stay curious, and hold your plans lightly. The trouble Valery named might be exactly what forces us to be more resilient and honest about what we actually control.