My Candle Logo Image Has Always Been About You

An explanation.

Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.

And one of those ways is to explain something you’ve been staring at here all along.

A few readers have remarked to me lately that I’m too optimistic, that I’m just a Pollyanna. (Disaster preppers are in vogue these days instead.) Why do I appear too optimistic? It’s because I’m writing out of sync. I’m not writing in step with our times. I write optimism in a time of cynicism because I am a futurist and that means I say things that it’s too early to believe.

I know how very bad the world can be. And I know there are Very Large Problems ahead and that the future may be dark. My next few posts, for example, will be about the likelihood of another American civil war starting soon. Spoiler alert: I am not worried. I’ll explain why soon.

Much of what I’ve been writing since I started this newsletter has been about reasons for hope for the future and that the future you fear is ahead is not.

I’m writing on those because they’re the basics. People won’t start working toward a better future until they can believe that one is possible. And right now we’re still caught in the late days of the Age of Extremism, Cynicism, and Existential Dread that we’ve been in for a few decades but probably will start to end in the next year or two — or maybe even by the end of this year. And because we’re still in that Age almost no one can imagine that next year might be anything other than doom.

Which brings me to my candle logo image. It’s a candle alarm. For thousands of years the way people set their alarm clocks — before alarm clocks existed — was to wedge a nail into the side of a candle for when they wanted to be awakened. (Good candlemakers knew their candles’ burn rates and could mark hours down the side of one of their candles.) When the candle burned down to the right hour, the wax would melt around the nail, and the nail would clatter down into the pan and wake the person up.

So. Our world is the candle, the flame is the passage of time, and we are the nails. Right now — because we’re still in this Age — it looks like our world is only on fire and time is running out and we’re trapped in the wax and doom is coming soon. No. I’m telling you that what looks like an approaching wildfire is just the end of the Age getting closer to us and that the fire won’t burn us up; it will melt the wax and free us to dream again and to make everything better.

• Spoiler alert: because of you and because of things already long since under way, the future is going to be better than the present. And the candles for the next possible Ages are almost done being dipped.

• We’re not forever-lost in the woods; we’re nearly to the edge of the forest and we’re almost into the clear.

There’s ten tons of imagination, creativity, and goodness in each of us but right now we’re trapped in our fear and we’re trapped in the wax. But soon — very soon — the wax will melt and this Age will end and we’ll be on the way to far, far better. And part of the better is going to come from you. Time to get ready.

Like I said: I say things that it’s too early to believe.

One last thing. If you haven’t figured it out yet: I’m not writing to prepare you for disaster. I’m writing to prepare you for the opposite.