" The best way to predict the future is to create it. "
As the curtains descend from the African skies on the greatest spectacle on Earth, the eyes are transfixed on a cephalopod with eight limbs, each seemingly more potent that the 'Hand of God'.
'Octopus Paul' not just predicted the outcome of Germany's matches or the winner of the World Cup, it also revealed an innate human nature - 'The eagerness to see the future before it happens'.
And as the time machine remains an unfulfilled dream, our choice of soothsayers keeps getting arcane by the day.
Whatever be the oracular skills that the octopus might be endowed with, I somehow see a greater prophetic ability on part of its keeper.
The octopus never knew that it was being used to predict the outcome of the World Cup matches. The keeper did.
The fact that the box from which the mussel was devoured indicated the winner of the match was also an interpretation of the keeper. I always thought that it is the losers that get gobbled up, but this time around the symbolism was different.
The keeper also seemed to know from before-hand that the group matches would yield a result. Uncanny, since a draw would have been an equally likely event as a win or a loss.
So what to Paul was actually food, seemed to have become fodder for a chimera that unveiled the future.
Whatever be the human urge to learn about the future, and whatever be the contrivances to unearth it, I believe that the present has enough conundrums that deserve a solution before the vision for the future can be enlightened.
And let us not strive to take a glimpse of the future without trying to create it ourselves.
For us and our posterity...
And as long as 'Octopus Paul' is engaged to predict Spain as the winner of the World Cup, it is not much of an ado.
I only hope that its soothsayer skills are not honed to predict a solution to Spain's economic turmoil...
