I did not set out to create this motto. But the words first arrived as a story from my mother, then as a steady drumbeat through the seasons of my life. “It will come.” Simple. Unrushed. Certain. A phrase that held firm when outcomes were unclear and the world felt loud, reminding me that what truly matters cannot be forced, only invited, cultivated, and met.
What “It Will Come” Means
“It will come” has become more than an affirmation. It is a stance toward life and work: trust the process while moving with intention. In practice, that stance becomes a daily discipline:
“Through patience and persistence, it will come.”
The phrase itself, however, is a translation of my [maternal] great‑grandfather’s saying in Tuvaluan, “tēnā loa e fanatu,” which he used to describe a time when future generations would return to ancestral wisdom after a period of forgetting.
In spirit: a covenant with time and truth
In action: patience in the waiting, persistence in the doing
In community: faith that good work compounds, and that the right people find each other at the right time
The Backstory: A Prophecy Carried Forward
As Christianity spread across the South Pacific, my great‑grandfather was asked to “put the old ways away.” He complied with clear eyes, understanding the tide that was moving, yet he offered a prophecy: a generation would come seeking those old ways again.
That line — tēnā loa e fanatu —passed through my family as a seed waiting for soil. When it reached me, it became a compass.
Adopting the phrase reoriented my path. I began to study indigenous knowledge systems and Polynesian wayfinding, discovering in those traditions practical technologies of intuition, navigation, and trust—tools for moving through uncertainty by reading subtle signals.
Over time (starting ~2008), the prophecy fused with my personal fascination with white wolves — an animal that taught me both patience (waiting for the moment) and persistence (running the distance). From that fusion came a working mantra I could build with:
“Through patience and persistence, it will come.”
That mantra shaped how I built communities, launched experiments, and even became the name for my first podcast, “The It Will Come Show.” It became a rhythm for my work: lay foundations, nurture good constraints, listen to the field, then move when the wind changes. It even led to my (still ongoing) membership group, GSD Lab (which was originally called “The Pack”).
Season by season, the phrase moved from story to system—from a private reassurance to a public offering that others could practice with me.
The Evolution: From Phrase to Practice
Ancestral seed: “tēnā loa e fanatu” arrives as a promise across generations
Personal mantra: “through patience and persistence” gives the promise legs for daily life
Community method: designing spaces and systems that reward consistent, values‑aligned action over hype
Public work: the “It Will Come” show, writing, and frameworks that blend ancient wisdom with modern tools.
What changed over the years was not the core meaning but the container. The phrase became a method for how to build and a criterion for what to build. It taught me to trust slow roots and visible fruits, not just rapid shoots.
Why It Matters Now: Conscious Tech & Conscious Stack Design
We’re entering an era where technology is intimate—touching our attention, language, relationships, and choices in real time. In this environment, speed without soul is a liability. “It will come” is the antidote and the operating system.
For conscious tech: the mantra guards against extractive design. It favors tech and tools that honor human rhythms, consent, and context. And in the future, technology that may actually become alive (possibly with its own, or blended, consciousness).
For Conscious Stack Design™ (CSD): it clarifies cadence. Choose a stable anchor, support it with a few strong pillars, run small, intentional experiments, and let results compound. Don’t force emergence. Invite it.
For teams and creators: it keeps ambition accountable to integrity. We move forward, but not at the cost of what makes us truly human.
My future work aims to make this practical: build tools, communities, and media that demonstrate what conscious tech looks like when it is navigated (and grounded) with ancestral wisdom. “It will come” is the throughline—an ancient promise delivered as a modern practice.
And if we hold to it together, the future we’re seeking won’t merely arrive. We’ll meet it ready.