The basic form of the future tense in English is [will + verb], as in I will rake my neighbor’s leaves. Interestingly, this modal is homograph and homophone for will (n.): determined intention, or the act of asserting a choice, and will (v.): to exercise the act of volition in attempt to accomplish something. I bet that at some distant point in the past, intention and futurity were commingled in this word.

The other form of the future tense in English is [be going to + verb], as in I am going to rake my neighbor’s leaves. Interestingly, this has the syntactic form of a present progressive tense, as in I am typing a blog post, occurring on the verb go (to travel or move toward a destination), followed by an infinitive. The progressive expresses a current state of ongoing action or process, and the infinitive is a truncated verb phrase that is always used to talk about uncompleted future goals or targets. Therefore, we can say that the second form of the future tense could be interpreted as “being in a current state of process of going towards a yet-unrealized future goal.”

I think it is no coincidence that our two ways of expressing future tense are intention and targeted movement. We obviously cannot make declarative facts about the future because we cannot know what will happen. What we can do is make statements of intention (will) or prediction based on extrapolations from the present (be going to).

My question is, can one of the forms expression be true without the other? Will you rake your neighbor’s leaves if you are not going to rake your neighbor’s leaves? Semantically, it’s a contradiction.

And yet I let this contradiction slip into my life all the time. My grammar betrays the difference between my alleged intentions and my real priorities. I say I will do this or that, but I don’t make any motion towards the goal.

“I will spend more time in prayer with God.”

“I will reach out to that lost friend.”

“I will invite them over for dinner.”

Oh God, give me the strength of mind to unite my will and the motion of my hands and feet, even as I write this. Let me show the sincerity of my resolutions by the immediacy of their visible effects in my life. Let my future intentions be present tense.