Living the Future First

What does living the future first mean in my life today?

👋🏿 hi, i’m jess ariel-wamala and i’m so excited to start this journey with you. this space is where i’ll explore big questions about leadership, liberation, and the rituals that shape who we are. I’m diving into this writing practice to reconnect with my voice, cultivate curiosity, and share stories that matter.

What does living the future first mean in my life today?

It’s a question I’ve been sitting with as I navigate the intersections of my interior world, leadership, and this relentless, beautiful, aching moment in history.

For me, living the future first often starts with the seemingly small and trivial: how I raise my daughter. It’s in the daily choices that I aim to model the liberated world I want her to grow into.

I get a lot of compliments from strangers on how I am raising my daughter and so many questions around why she’s so caring, kind, observant—or cringe, obedient. I honestly always go back to basic first principles: treat others how you’d want to be treated.

As adults, we don’t tell colleagues to “get on board” just because, or jerk our parents by the back of their neck when they dilly-dally behind at a party making small talk. And most of all, we don’t double down on encroaching someone’s personal space if they shy away from our bold bids for connection—raising our voices, gesticulating even closer in their face, or worse, forcing them into a hug. 

I’ve chosen to treat Nyah like the little person she is: fully human. Yes is a full sentence. No is a full sentence. Consent matters. Naming and holding my own boundaries matters. Speaking to others with care and a gentle touch matters.

This means apologizing when I raise my voice, forcefully demand her attention, or accidentally ignore her because I’m absent-mindedly doom-scrolling. As an imperfect human, I, too, fall short of the same lessons I want her to follow. When I yell “no” and snatch something dangerous (like scissors), it’s up to me to come back into myself, apologize for losing control, and reaffirm the importance of safe choices.

Living the future first to me means manifesting possibility today. Growing up, I didn’t see duality modeled in such a radical way but now I realize duality’s power in liberation.

What if liberation is already here, and we’re just learning how to recognize it?

This question is giving me permission to stop striving for something I can’t yet name and start noticing what’s already here. Not tomorrow, or when I finally get my ish together. World-building can always start today. And I invite myself every day to imagine other worlds.

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Now, this practice of imagining other worlds isn’t new for me. Even as a child, I found ways to escape and dream beyond what was in front of me.

As a kiddo, I had a poster that feels silly to admit now but gave me so much hope. It was the original 1998 Apple Macintosh desktops in their five iconic iMac colorways—a sleek design that shaped my love for modern design well into my 20s. “Think Different” held my gaze every night. When my external world felt heavy, I’d bite down hard and vanish behind that poster, imagining a portal into freedom.

As someone who’s spent years in tech—a world driven by urgency and optimization—that quiet has been hard to prioritize. My days are often measured in outputs and efficiencies, an unrelenting pace I once mistook for progress. But as I deepen my practice of mindful leadership, I’m rediscovering how expansive the work becomes when we move at the speed of trust.

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Please hear me: in no way do I feel like I’ve “nailed it” as a parent. Nyah is still a two-year-old and a formidable, precocious human who sometimes has me feeling depleted and personally victimized. But living the future first isn’t a totality or a static state.

It’s like the modicum of freedom I imagined as a little girl. It’s like that first bite of an extremely satisfying, yet visibly underwhelming fast-casual pizza that completely blindsides you. It has no hallmarks of a place you’d return to, it’s unclear why you chose it to begin with, yet it quickly becomes the top takeout choice for easy nights in.

To me, to live the future first means turning down the volume on the skeptical voices, most especially my own. This feels sudden—anytime I take the first step to own and validate my creative ideas, my ideas, for a single moment, don’t feel so out there, radical, or plain weird. Instead, they feel more realized, secure, and known.

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When I think of the leaders I admire, they all have a few things in common. Their legacy, impact, and fame came not from subjugation, exploitation, or demonizing others, but from their ability to uphold compassion, care, and accountability. They care deeply about ensuring their vision serves everyone, where inclusivity becomes the wellspring of abundance. They hold duality and contradiction, even from those who oppose them. I think of all types of leaders—Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Thích Nhất Hạnh—leaders who radically humanized the world around them.

I’m excited to finally return to a writing practice that feels safe enough to explore these questions.

Again, What does it r e a l l y mean to live the future first?

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I am hopeful Substack will hold my writing practice safely and liberate me from the overachieving-to-burnout pipeline by providing an encouraging structure to cultivate my interior world. It’s a self-actualization my younger, credential-seeking self never had the luxury to explore.

So here’s where I am today, in this post: reclaiming my voice, reconnecting with writing, and exploring what it means to lead and live with compassion.

This space is my invitation to you, and to myself, to engage in the messy, transformative act of storytelling.

Will you join me? What does living the future first mean to you? Drop a comment or subscribe to join the conversation.