400. Prophets Among Us

If you said you were a prophet, would anyone believe you? People would think you were joking or maybe just seeking attention. If you told them you were serious, they might think you were crazy. They would not think it possible that you could see the future or tell us about it.

The possibility of there being prophets among us is something we have generally ruled out. It does not seem realistic that there could be human beings capable of seeing more of what is to come than we can. We know there are many who have claimed such things in the past, only to have later been shown to be spreading nothing more than vague tautological truths or provenly false delusions.

But you, the one who sees what is to come, are not vague or delusional. You see something specific about the way the world must be and you feel the urge to share your vision with others. You can see what others have missed because your awareness is heightened in this one area. Your fault, if you have one, is that you believe in your vision so strongly that you offer it to us in stark terms: this is what the future will be.

Such a pronouncement feels too presumptuous for us to accept. It feels that way because we cannot see the necessity of what you are seeing and saying. For you then, the challenge is obvious. If we cannot see, you must help us see. There is no other way to bring us around to what you already know to be the truth.

You must create whatever is necessary for us to share in your vision. You must show us the way towards the awareness we do not already possess. Only in this way might we reluctantly agree, long after you have been proven correct, that you were, in fact, a prophet. And it is precisely in this way that every great artist has been and continues to be a prophet.