The past lies in wait

The future is rational
only in hindsight. -mg taylor axiom

At long last, backcasting is becoming a common concept and a mainstream practice among the service design ecosystem as well as communities and organizations actively engaged in designing their future.

When I read this passage from the absurdly great Italo Calvino, I am reminded of a correlary axiom to "the future is rational only in hindsight": history lies in wait for us only in the future. In other words, what we do in the future will go a long way towards making sense and meaning of what has happened up to this point. Of course, Calvino embues it with poetry in how he phrases it:

"The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there... What he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past, it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey.
The foreigness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossed places."  - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities