We spend our whole lives worrying about the future, planning for the future, trying to predict the future, as if figuring it out will cushion the blow. But the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears and wildest hopes. But one thing is certain when it finally reveals itself. The future is never the way we imagined it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how our attempts to predict and control the future often lead to frustration, as reality rarely aligns with our expectations.
In this quote, Shonda Rhimes emphasizes the futility of worrying excessively about the future, highlighting that despite our best efforts to plan and predict what is to come, the future remains unpredictable and often different from our imaginations. It suggests that while we carry fears and hopes regarding what lies ahead, the only certainty is that our expectations will not match reality, urging us to find peace in uncertainty and embrace the unknown.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students facing an uncertain future.
I have so much going on inside my head in terms of writing, there's such a large space in my life taken up by that. I can't imagine it being taken up by a husband and children and writing, and everything getting its due. I don't believe there is room for all of it. I really don't.
There's always women of many different races on my shows, and there are always women who look many different ways, but there is still a size thing in this industry. It's hard. I mean to have to say, 'I want a larger woman to be an actor on my shows.' Or, 'Find me a larger woman,' is almost insulting to me.
When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.
We all think we’re going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You got to wonder why we cling to our expectations, because the expected is just what keeps us steady. Standing. Still. The expected's just the beginning, the unexpected is what changes our lives.
In my house, you got in trouble if you didn't speak up. My mom would be furious at us if we went to school and behaved nicely if someone treated us badly. If we got in trouble because we had yelled at them or told them that they were wrong, my mother would be like, 'Good job.'
When I'm hard at work, when I'm deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyonce. And it is all of those things at the same time.
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
I hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I will be resolute and make an art of government; I will balance my inherited past and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will be known for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine down the corridors of time for as long as humans exist.
We live not, in reality, on the summit of a solid earth but at the bottom of an ocean of air
We will never be cleansed until we confess we are dirty. And we will never be able to wash the feet of those who have hurt us until we allow Jesus, the one we have hurt, to wash ours.
If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.
The best interpreter of the law is custom.
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