I was minding my own business, but in third grade you have to expect the unexpected. One minute you’re listening to the teacher, and then the next thing you know, a note lands on your desk. You open it. Someone likes you. Oh no. Moments later you’re simply visiting the water fountain and then presented with more abrupt news. A tap on the shoulder. Someone doesn’t like you. Oh no.

School was a minefield of information, and I believed all of it. The likes. The dislikes. I even believed the curious group of girls who congregated around a small paper creation. Only one of the girls could operate it at a time. I assumed she was the oracle and they were merely groupies. The world of girls was already a mystery to me, but here they were claiming the ability to tell the future.

I’ve come to learn that some kids in other parts of the country called them cootie catchers. Other names for this thing include chatterbox, whirlybird, salt cellar, paku-paku, and the pretty straightforward origami fortune-teller. I never knew what this thing on their hands was called. There was always a hushed silence when it would appear. With reverence like this around it, I never heard them use a name.

A group of girls pulled me into their orbit. Like a sorcerer, the girl with the paper on her hand held it out for all to see. She opened and closed it to a rhythm I didn’t understand. She announced that this would tell my future. I attempted to act like this was normal. My wide eyes and open mouth surely gave me away as I, with deep fear, awaited my fate.

“Pick a color,” she said.

“Blue,” I responded.

Oh no. Why did I pick blue? More paper folds in and out. I am certain I have made a poor choice. I could’ve gone with yellow or red. Blake would’ve gone with red. Not me. I had to choose blue. Too late now, though. My destiny has already been decided. Except she presented me with another choice:

“Now, pick a number,” she said.

“Five,” I said.

“There’s only one through four,” all the girls said in unison.

I pick the number 3, and all their eyebrows go up. Why did all their eyebrows go up? What do these girls know? Was I not supposed to pick 3? Have I already wrecked my entire life? Why did they have to decide my fate today? I’m leaving early to go to the dentist, and it’s already a big day.

She spoke: “You’re going to drive . . . a green car . . .”

I can live with that, I think to myself.

“. . . live . . . in a boat . . .”

Odd, but adventurous. This isn’t so bad. Keep going . . .

“. . . have seven kids . . .”

On a boat?

“. . . and marry . . . Rachel.”

I don’t know Rachel very well, but . . .

Rachel’s face told me that she was not excited about this prospect. More specifically, Rachel’s face looked as if she’d just caught a glimpse of a dystopian future. She’d seen a Hunger Games–Mad Max–Terminator mashup of darkness that awaited her life to come. I wanted to console her, let her know that I’d do my best to make our future together happy. We could go for rides in my green car together. I’d even let her name all seven of the children. But, embarrassed, I walked away, hoping desperately that the future would somehow be better than that moment felt.

That little paper doodad was fake news. Things turned out better. Far better. I wish I could travel through time to let both Rachel and my younger self know that it all turns out okay. She doesn’t have to marry me. I didn’t get a green car or end up living on a boat. Those girls with that wad of paper didn’t know what they were talking about. I wish I could somehow go back and plant a brighter vision of the future in all of those kids’ heads. The future is bigger and better than anything you could fit on a piece of paper. That doesn’t stop us from trying to predict what it might look like.

During the Listening Tour, I walked into one elementary school and noticed several photos on the wall. This was a project they’d done to celebrate the hundredth day of school. The students had imagined what it would look like and be like when they, themselves, turned one hundred years old. To make these predictions, students had their photos taken using an app that distorted their faces, making them appear several years older. This filter added wrinkles and lines, pulled their eyes down, and grayed their hair. Occasionally accessories were added, like bifocals or old-timey hats. Below each image were thoughts from the students on what they would be like if they lived to be one hundred years old.

When I am one hundred years old, I will look and do things differently than I do now. I will walk very slow. I will make cookies for my grandkids. I will have very droopy cheeks.

Then it ends with this:

I am looking forward to being one hundred years old.

Really? Here’s another:

When I am one hundred years old, I will have gray hair and dentures. I will be walking with a cane. I am going to live in a retirement home with my wife. I think turning one hundred will be amazing.

It will be amazing. Or will it?

Lily Tomlin once said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.” There’s certainly the idea of what we’d all like to happen, and then there’s the reality. These kids were playfully blending their ideal future while also peppering in a few of the unwanted realities of aging. Based on what they’ve observed about getting older, kids know the future will likely include wrinkles and walkers. Hard candy and hearing loss. Kids sometimes mimic becoming older by arching their backs and putting their hands behind them to do so. They’ll speak in slow, scratchy voices as they act out what they think getting older might be.

None of these kids can predict what life will be like in the future. That definitely doesn’t stop them or us from imagining what things might be like. Through stories we make up and stories we believe about what is to come in our own lives, we create visions of the future. So often there can be a tendency to lean toward the bleak. Many of the most popular stories about where humanity is headed are dark. These are images of a world none of us want to live in.

I think stories about dystopian futures are meant to move us into action, to help us see the error of our ways. They’re really just entertainment, but somehow we’ve sort of started to believe them. Our culture has stopped taking these dark ideas of what’s to come as fiction and decided they are unavoidable. Like the destinies handed to us by the little girl in the back of the class with an all-seeing origami fortune-teller.

I discussed this very idea with an astronaut. Ron Garan was just a kid when he gathered with his family around a small black-and-white television set to watch as Apollo 11 landed on the moon. He was never the same, and decided to spend the rest of his life chasing after that dream. Since then he has spent more than 178 days in space and has traveled 71,075,867 miles in 2,842 orbits of our planet. In addition to his space missions, Ron has also served as an aquanaut, living and working in an underwater lab. It’d be easy to have a conversation with him and feel microscopic, given all that he’s accomplished. That’s not how he operates, though. Ron sees things with different eyes—adventure goggles.

Many astronauts return to Earth with stories of how they view life differently. It’s become known as the overview effect. Being detached from everything they’d ever known and experienced and then finding themselves looking down at their home planet has profoundly affected several of our explorers in space. For Ron, his moment came as he dangled outside the International Space Station and looked to see the beauty of Earth 240 miles below him. He was moved by the beauty—and also struck by the inequity. Below him was a planet with everything it needed for those who inhabited it, yet they were unable to see themselves as a human family.

When I first spoke with Ron, it was of course through can and string. This man is one of the most decorated pilots; he is a brilliant researcher and a daring explorer. On that day, though, I had to serve as the expert. He can be quite no-nonsense, which is one of the things that makes for a great astronaut. However, he couldn’t wrap his head around how the can phone would work.

“Where does it plug in?” he asked me in all seriousness.

“It’s pretend,” I told him.

“No, it has to be plugged in.”

Ron simply wanted to make sure the other end of the string was properly attached to something. It didn’t matter if nobody would see it. He’s a man of details. This only made me love him more.

I asked him every question I’d ever wanted to ask an astronaut, and he answered. We talked about brushing your teeth in zero gravity, getting sick in space, listening to music, and whether he believed in aliens. (He hasn’t ruled out the possibility.) Most of all, we talked about the dizzying view of this planet from far away and what that does to shift your thinking. Ron doesn’t believe everyone has to go to space to get or to live with this orbital perspective. He feels it’s a choice. We decide to see artificial divides between people or we decide to grow and see the humanity in every person.

“One of the key things going to space provided us all, as humans, is a view of ourselves, which shows the reality. That reality is this: We are one people on one planet traveling toward a common future,” said Ron with a strong smile. Fiercely optimistic, he talks about our planet as if we all have vital puzzle pieces each person needs. Our shared problems could be solved if we’d just stop separating ourselves from the very people who have pieces of the puzzle we need. We are not one another’s competition, we are one another’s puzzle pieces.

Ron is passionate when he talks about the future. However, he doesn’t just talk about his future or my future. It’s always our “collective future.” “Whether you’re a child or an adult, the truth doesn’t change,” he says. “We have a shared future. If we don’t learn to work together, that shared future will not be as positive as it could be.”

The idea of a shared future is exciting, but it’s also sort of terrifying. We might be struggling to handle our own individual problems and our own individual growth. How are we supposed to handle the collective growth of all humanity? I get nervous eating with a fork sometimes, and I’ve been wrestling with anxiety over how I’m going to be a good parent for my children. Should I be allowed to be in charge of everyone else’s future, too?

The shared future doesn’t always look bright. We’re bombarded with these visions of a worst-case-scenario time to come. The problems around us can seem too daunting, and our abilities can appear too limiting. It can start to feel like there’s little difference any one person could make.

I have to tell you, I started looking back at the Listening Tour and the enormous world it revealed to me of schools and educators, of young and old. Zooming out opened my eyes to a world of possibilities, and I truly began to live with radical amazement at all of life. But I do have to admit that it also made me feel really small. I began seeing just how big life is and how huge and complex the problems in it can be. Yes, every voice matters, but not every voice is actually heard. Yes, hope is where we are, but what if we’re not in the right place?

Wrestling with my own insignificance in it all, I began to wonder, Am I really doing anything with my little life to help shape a better tomorrow? Am I actually becoming a better grownup? Am I a great future ancestor?

Maybe one big reason I feel so small is also the reason we as a society can’t seem to see a more optimistic future. I think it’s because we fail to see any ways we could be a part of creating it. The future has been decided. What will be, will be—regardless of what we do. Ron told me a story that changed all this for me. I have since tried to share it with every kid and former kid in my path.

He began by describing a scenario that didn’t sound too far out of place for a science fiction film. Imagine that Earth is in imminent danger of being hit by a giant asteroid. This asteroid is big enough to wipe out every living thing here. Scientists have studied it. Astronomers are watching it closely. There is no denying it, this enormous mass of destruction is headed directly for our home. The soundtrack blasts ominous music. People cry. Our shared future is grim.

Now, in similar scenarios like this in films, the story dictates that the government or some brilliant and ambitious problem-solver sends a ragtag team of space heroes to blow up the asteroid. We wage war against the asteroid. Our show of force humiliates the asteroid. We make it sorry it ever came close to our part of the galaxy. There are many explosions. Humans win. The end. The soundtrack blasts upbeat music. People cheer. Our shared future is bright.

That might work in the movies, but it is not how it would play out in real life. Ron explains that it’d be much less explosive, but no less fascinating. With the asteroid on a collision course for planet Earth, we wouldn’t throw up our hands and give up. On the other side of that, we wouldn’t send space heroes or explosives, either. What would it take? Even with just slight advance notice, we could take action. Here’s what we’d do.

A small spacecraft would need to be sent into orbit. That spacecraft would then extend an arm to the asteroid. With the force of a feather, it would nudge the space rock. Over the course of its remaining journey, that tiny nudge would result in hundreds of thousands of miles in missed distance for the asteroid to our planet. Every living thing on the planet would be spared, thanks to a tiny nudge.

Now, not a day goes by that I do not think about tiny nudges. The little things that completely alter the trajectory of something seemingly impossible to move. The small, insignificant pushes that alter the course of my life and the lives of people around me. Though we might want to do big, grand things to make our mark on this universe, maybe the boldest, biggest thing we can do is propel a brighter future forward with little, tiny nudges. There is radical power in being gentle. One tiny nudge can transform everything.

As Ron told me, “We’re going to steer ourselves toward the beautiful, positive, visionary future. It just takes daily nudges.” I believe him. Not just because he’s an astronaut or because he’s smarter and stronger than I am. I believe him because it speaks to everything I witnessed in my adventures visiting kids and former kids. Each classroom was a peek into the crystal ball of what our future could look like. There I saw young people who already held an understanding that we all need one another. I saw compassionate risk takers, fist shakers, change makers, cheerleaders, bird feeders, joy fighters, lamplighters. I saw extraordinary future ancestors already passing on tiny nudges of goodness that’ll impact the lives of people they may never even meet.

We need better grownups who can reimagine our idea of imagination. In that gap between what is and what could be, adults should stand passing out feathers. I’ve started carrying bags of them with me when I visit schools. It’s an invitation for kids not only to dream about the future that could be, but to work today to create it. It’s also empowering to realize all the ways we can rewrite reality with gentle but steady compassion every single day.

To believe that the best days are behind us is short-sighted. To operate as if things will not improve, nor can they improve, is to give up. To feel like we’re marching toward something terrible is to have your eyes closed to the beauty of all that is around us. To provide little loving nudges every day is to do something very big. We’re better grownups, creating a world with even better grownups. So here’s to the future—your future, my future, and our future.