President's Report

The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be …

This quote has rattled around in me since I first encountered it. It stays in my mind because it is so apt right now, but also because it seems absolutely true yet not immediately self-evident.

The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think. It's an extraordinary declaration, asserting that the unknown need not be turned into the known through false divination, or the projection of grim political or ideological narratives; it's a celebration of darkness … (Virginia Woolf, as quoted in Solnit, 2014)

This dark future evokes void that is both frightening and filled with opportunity - the realm of negative capability in which we are “… capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Keats, 1891/1958, p. 193). We need this in our work; we need this in our times; and, interestingly enough, we may need this organizationally.

In preparing to write this report, I went back and looked at most of the previous President's Reports over the past 20 years. Among the announcements of new committee chairs and organizational commentary, there are themes around survival, attempts to understand place and position, and struggles to clarify what it is we have to offer. Alongside these existential organizational questions, I saw palpable enthusiasm and appreciation for our creativity, commitment, industry, and vitality.

This review struck me because of the way it echoed my own questions (or am I the echo?). I was surprised to see ideas and feelings I thought were specific to this moment in NCSPP represented across the years. These inquiries — Who are we? What are we doing? Why? and Will we survive? — are not only about the right now. This is the material. This is what we are working with. This is our dark (beautifully unknown) future that we keep emerging into. This is both a truthful and tedious recognition. We r