Ray Attempts to Predict the Future on the Eve of 2026

Seeing the future is hard work. I don't know about you, but my crystal ball is mostly broken these days. And then there’s that looking glass.

Lately it feels like we have stepped right through it into another dimension, where everything’s upside down and sideways.

You may be familiar with the reference: Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There is another rabbit hole we may go down when trying to make sense of where we are headed.

Photo courtesy of the Gutenberg Project

In Caroll’s 1871 sequel to Alice in Wonderland our protagonist, Alice, steps through a mirror into a world where everything is in reverse. For instance, in order to move forward, she must walk backwards. She’s become nothing more than a pawn in a giant game of chess. Does this sound unsettlingly familiar? As we consider the future, is this trip through the looking glass an appropriate metaphor?

Or perhaps another piece of metaphorical prediction hardware could show us our future? The crystal ball!

It’s been used by various cultures around the world for over 5000 years. The image of a pointy-hatted wizard peering into a glass ball has even become iconic, particularly since Disney got ahold of it. Suddenly, Mickey Mouse sees the future! How cool is that?

So, I invite you, oh dear reader, to gaze INTENTLY into the history and folklore of said crystal ball. It will mysteriously reveal its trick: it’s not so much to look into or through, but rather, AT. At the reflections on its surface, there to be found, if you focus. Foooaaaaccccusss…as the wizard Mickey Mouse might say. Earlier versions of soothsayers used all kinds of metals, glass, and other reflective surfaces, including water, to see what there was to see. A crystal ball is the exact opposite of going through a looking glass. The crystal ball version of the future is none other than your own world, reflected back at you. It's the world that we wish for, reflecting whatever we may be looking for. Crystal balls “work” because of the well-known human trait that we see what we want to see. Maybe that’s why the telling of fortunes with a crystal ball has been a profitable business and party trick for over 5000 years.

A new year, 2026, is upon us. We are almost all in the business of predicting the future. But just what IS the allure of prediction? Perhaps it's that if we can know the future we can control the future. Controlling something that does not yet exist, the future, is that profitable business and party trick we would all like to do. Yet I have already debunked one piece of future seeing hardware, the crystal ball, and also tried to get y’all to step away from the other, that looking glass; because that future is too dang scary and that little girl, Alice, was just too young to make good choices.

Now, am I saying that even the future itself doesn’t exist?

Right at the moment when you have all of those New Year’s hopes, dreams and resolutions inked on paper and ready to be toasted to before you kiss the girl, or she kisses you, and you sleep off the last night of the year, which was once young but now has aged to the point that it's hard to be convinced that midnight still has a countdown before it too slides away to its future.

What if I told you that the future really DOES exist, and can even be seen, no hardware required? But, like all of this mysterious mumbo jumbo, there’s a catch. Because there is no “THE” future. Rather, there’s lots of them. And you can see’ em, but it all depends on how you look and where you look. The big reveal, which neither the wizard Mickey, Lewis Carroll, the party trick soothsayer, nor any of those other dimestore future conjurers would ever tell you, is that the future is not so much seen as FOUND!

Photo: Zeynep Karayel

THE future can be like items in a resale shop. Imagine if finding your future was like sorting through the racks, looking for bargains on stuff that’s meaningful to you.

You say to yourself, IT’s there somewhere, and you'll know it when you see it, even if you're not yet sure of what you are looking for. Or, seeing THE future might be like looking for one specific bargain object, only to accidentally discover something entirely different. Cosmic accidents like this happen more often than you think. It's about the art of looking, sifting, even rummaging; not the pseudo-juju of prognostication and the arrogance of always having to know what you’re looking for. It's that weird, self-centered concept of “manifestation”, dragged kicking and screaming through its own looking glass.

Futures have nothing to do with peering into glass balls or stepping through mirrors to some inverted reality. Stumbling upon your future might feel more like finding that cool, authentic truckers cap you didn't know you wanted, and definitely don’t need. But there it sits in the corner, next to some kid’s lost teddy bear, and dammit, you just gotta have that cap (go ahead, buy the teddy bear too!) Or maybe it's a vintage record of some repute in a discard record bin. How could someone let that particular version of your past AND your future go when you have been thumbing through the used record section in search of it for years?

This version of future seeking is more about the discovery of that which was not hidden, but has also not yet been found. It's a cosmic easter egg hunt! Remember that feeling of finding a well-hidden egg, or witnessing the excitement of little kids on their own hunts? Discovering one concealed egg is so much more fun than knowing which aisle in the grocery store will lead you to a dozen.

In closing, I admit that I tricked you into reading this vignette by suggesting that I may be able to predict the future. I cannot.

But I bet I could still find an Easter egg, if those pesky little kids would let me try, and not get to all of them before me.

As this year of 2025 screeches to a halt or dissipates into the fog of the next, I would like to humbly offer, as my penance for my slight trickery, a salutation; with the hope that it might replace that scratched crystal ball or beat up looking glass.

My salutation, my prayer, is for hope and discovery. May you have it in your heart to look, and to see; even when what you find is not what you thought you were looking for. This is the never-ending river of your futures: seen, and yet to be seen.

Happy Holidays; and may the New Year of 2026 be full of discovery, wonder and light!

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