The future dimension is one that all humanity imagines and inhabits. Without the ability to imagine the future there would be no action – in the immediate, mid term, or long range. In the most immediate sense, the future is the present. We arrive at each new moment, our future, and it is our present. The past, present, and future are entwined. The seeds of the future are embedded in every moment of embodied time. On the most basic corporeal level, our possible longevity is, in part, rooted in childhood nutrition. Thus the duration of our lives is affected by the beginnings of life, interknitting past and future in our basic physicality. Yet the past and the present are only an influence on the future. The past and present are involved in making a future but they do not determine the future (Coleman, 2008). Thus, the future is not predetermined but laden with possibility and surprise. In each moment of old age there is an imagined future – a becoming. This becoming is contained even in the sure knowledge of finitude as we move from life to death. It is only death that looms as the inevitable and unflinching future moment.

This chapter explores the future through the eyes of the research participants – older people who perceive their futures through the lens of relative time. The possibility of a long life was a central feature of many participants’ imagining of the future. Like relative time, longevity has shaped their perception of the future. In this chapter the concept of ‘deep time’ is introduced. Deep time means that the postwar generation has been witness to a shift in duration in the lives of the previous generation. That shift has now been integrated into their own sense of life span. The previous generation have viewed their longevity with surprise, while the postwar generation view their own longevity with expectation. Deep time is explored in this chapter along with worries and fears, generativity, and leaving a legacy. As with every expression in our life span, we are becoming, as we look to the future.

Imagining the future

I start with different interviewees’ diverse ideas about imagining the future.