Despite being alive in this very moment, human beings have a tendency to want to “know” the future. Folks imagine a “career track” at work. At home they wonder about the “future of the relationship.” The United States government encourages us to believe in “social security” and legally requires citizens to pay exorbitant taxes so they can invest in the invisible future of 2074 A.D.

The aspiring SuperOptimist can take a lesson from Nobel Prize-winning Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Professor Bohr conducted countless scientific experiments where he would try to guess the real outcome of events imagined beforehand. With the best theoretical models available, he still could not predict the future any better than a drunken tourist at a craps table in Las Vegas. Professor Bohr summed up his career of deep scientific thought by saying: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

Bohr proves that no matter how smart you are, you can’t reliably predict 5 days from now, much less 50 years. That’s why the SuperOptimist believes that the “good time” is not in some imagined far distant future, but in every tiny moment of existence at this very moment right now. And now. And now. And…now.