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07/22/2001 Archived Entry: "22-July-2001"

WebWord Comment -- I am not a historian. But, I have been thinking about history a lot today. I'm not sure why. Here is a thought. Imagine that you need to make a big decision. Let's say that you are thinking about going to college. Now, imagine that you are five years into the future looking back at the decision. Where did it take you? From the perspective of your future-looking-back view, how do you feel about your decision? Returning from this forward-back perspective, what did you learn? The point that I am trying to make is that we always view the future as being, well, in the future. But that is not how we always need to think. With some mental flexibility, we can look back at now and understand how our current decisions were correct. That is, we can figure out if what we are doing now will make us feel right about our future, which will be our past, which is actually now. This is not totally unreasonable. We already do this kind of thinking when we think about the past. We look at the past from the persepctive of now and make judgements. There is no reason that we can not make the leap forward and do what we have done all of our lives. Give it a try. Note: I am assuming these kind of mental gymnastics must have some formal name. If you know, please post a comment.

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