Are You Coming or Not

On chasing possibility then — and now

Mar 17, 2026

image: Midjourney audio: Beca’s cloned voice: Eleven Labs

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On September 8, 1966, I bundled up my one-year-old son, drove over to my parents’ house, and tucked him into my old bedroom to sleep. Then I joined my parents in the living room, where my dad — a Penn State professor who taught Historical Utopias, Mark Twain, and Science Fiction — had asked me to come watch something with him.

Our house had always been filled to overflowing with books, and I had read almost all of them before leaving home at eighteen. So when Dad reached over and turned on the television, I was ready.

What I remember most, after all these years, isn’t the show itself. It’s what he said as he turned it on.

“This will change the world.”

The show was Star Trek. And he was right.

Why? Because it gave everyone the opportunity to see what was possible. It didn’t just entertain — it shifted perception. It opened doors. It made people willing to imagine a future worth living into.

Three years later, having sold everything we owned and loaded everything else into our Pontiac Le Mans, I turned to my then-husband and said, “Are you coming or not?”

I believed I had to chase my own opportunities. I didn’t have a clue what life would look like once we got there. I just knew we had to go.

Which is why, on July 20, 1969, my parents — who had come out to visit us — gathered with us in their hotel room in Santa Monica. And while my now four-year-old son stood on a watermelon to see out the window, we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

Possibilities. That’s what we were chasing. And the universe, it seemed, was saying: keep going.

Today, we are chasing the same thing.

Much of what we saw on Star Trek has either arrived or is arriving right now. The communicators became our phones. AI is moving towards Star Trek capabilities.

That all people — regardless of species, planet, or origin — deserved dignity and a seat at the table: that one is still in progress.

And of course, massive change brings chaos and confusion along with it. That has always been true. It is true now.

So as we each find our own way through this moment, what can we hold on to? What can we keep in mind so that the future we’re building is good — not someday, but now?

I keep returning to the word: possibilities.

If what worked before doesn’t work now, what are the possibilities?

If a door has closed, where is the one opening?

How can each of us turn a negative outcome into a good one?

On the show Parks and Recreation, the character Chris Traeger is relentlessly, almost comically, positive.

In one memorable scene, his friends take turns throwing him the worst scenarios they can imagine. And without missing a beat, he finds the good in every single one. It’s played for laughs.

But there’s something true in it, something that resonates with a deeper spiritual principle: there is always another way to see this.

That is not naivety. That is not denial. It is a trained willingness to look for the good — and to trust that it is there.

We won’t find possibilities by being hateful, fearful, or angry. We won’t find them by letting fear write the story.

Yes, change can be frightening. This particular moment of change — with all its speed and uncertainty — can feel overwhelming. That’s real, and it deserves acknowledgment.

But fear is not a compass. It will not point us forward.

Each of us can find a way forward by choosing, again and again, to be willing. Willing to look for the good contained in change. Willing to ask better questions. Willing to believe that a solution exists before we can see it.

There is always a solution. If we begin every problem from that premise, we move into this new age differently — with steadiness, with grace, with our eyes open.

We can be obsessively positive and clear-eyed about the pitfalls at the same time. These are not opposites.

Most of all, remember this:

Nothing has changed in the Infinite.

Good remains the only power. Life continues as an expression of Infinite Intelligence. The chaos we see is in the Earth State of Mind: the layer of experience where we interpret, react, and choose. And it is a choice.

As I have been saying for years, “What you perceive to be reality magnifies.”

So, what will you magnify?

My father knew that a television show could shift what people believed was possible. A little boy standing on a watermelon could witness history being made. An unprepared woman with a packed car could drive toward a life she couldn’t yet see.

Possibilities are not out there somewhere, waiting for the world to calm down.

They are here. They are now. They are yours.

Magnify Good.