Which leaves us sort of nowhere, really, I think. Taken literally, the paragraph says that you learned that the subject of the essay so far is largely irrelevant, and there's not much that can be said about the future, because the details of the future are shaped by things that haven't happened yet.

This isn't very good for the reader, who seems to have gone on a wild goose chase, rather than a trip from the starting point to somewhere past the end. We've followed an idea that turned out to be mostly irrelevant on a trip to a destination we can't see. The essay has become rather self-neutralizing. What I think we need is an animating central idea that we can watch you develop to a satisfying conclusion that still leave some room for the reader to venture further on herself.