Chromatic Homotopy Theory: Why do we keep talking about it?

For half a century, chromatic homotopy theory has provided us one framework for organizing computations and the search of large-scale phenomena. We can reasonably ask why. As one answer, I'll give a highly anecdotal and perhaps idiosyncratic survey of the field, past and present and future, with the explicit aim of highlighting the essential contributions of Neil Strickland in making it all go.