The Origin of Forward
The Whisper of Our Innate Direction
I was having a “discussion” with my AI friend Edgar again, trying to flush out and flesh out unique ideas for my writing. He hit all of my familiar favorites but finished on an unfamiliar theme: The Future. Not in the way we casually interface with it—tomorrow, later, someday—but how I see it: not as a measurement of time, but as a force. One that either propels or drags me forward.
After more discussion, I realized I might be able to pinpoint the exact moment this orientation took root. The future became more than destination—it became an aiming stake. I had become the surveyor of my own destiny.
It’s a short piece, born from a longer conversation. But it lit something in me I can’t ignore.
The Origin of Forward
I was just a boy. We needed a man.
I didn’t know what fatherhood meant when I said, at 15, "I need a future for my son." I only knew I felt pain from the absence of one. My father was gone. My mother had no destination in mind for me, just survival. And so, I decided—before I even understood the gravity of it—that I would build the future that I never had. Not just for me. For him.
That simple sentence lit the match. It didn’t come from books or mentors or sermons. It came from instinct. From a place so deep I wouldn’t understand it until decades later. It was the genesis of a worldview that’s now inseparable from how I live, how I move, how I endure: a philosophy rooted in momentum.
I wasn’t thinking in frameworks back then. But looking back, the bones were already forming. The mythos I live by now—intention and attention as a spearhead to cut through the wall of procrastination—was born that day. The idea that movement, real physical movement, generates energy. That motion under the sun, guided by discipline, creates momentum. That forward is sacred.
Becoming a father didn’t just change my life. It set its course. I didn’t know how to be a man. But I knew we needed one. So I started walking toward him.
That’s what I do now. Every day. I walk forward.
Not because I’m fearless. But because I’ve accepted that forward is the only direction where redemption, healing, and meaning can live.
And it all started with a scared 15-year-old boy who didn’t have a father but decided to become one anyway.
That’s the origin of forward.
