Living in the Near Future
We all live in the near future. In the mental health field, it seems curious that people may have different approaches to the present and the future. I’m sure all of these come from their experience of the past. Some people seem positive even in the worst dire circumstances, such as Victor Frankl, who even in the concentration camp in Germany could hold out a vision of hope and meaning. My wife and I had an experience that we never could explain to ourselves. When we were first married, we went to a marketing dinner and sitting next to us were two brothers, both having been in the concentration camps. The older brother was dour, and he was the owner of the large store, while his younger brother was happy-ish. While most people wouldn’t ask them about their experiences in the concentration camp, my wife did, and especially about their experiences after they got out. The older brother, who was financially more successful than the younger, related somewhat that they worked and did the best that they could. The younger brother said his older brother built a business that helped them both be very successful. My wife asked the younger brother how that happened, the older brother didn’t have much to say, but the younger brother said “We had connections when we got out”. My wife and I have wondered from then on how people make connections in a concentration camp. At the time it just seemed like a puzzle to me, but over the years I have come to the conclusion that the older brother always worried about what was gonna happen next; while the younger brother could look towards the older brother to take care of him and be his connection. This is an example that in the past, the older brother was always worried about the near future, that things would get worse no matter how good they were, and the younger brother that it would get better no matter how bad they were.
When we feel ill and go see our doctor, I think we are looking for him or her to tell us we won’t be inconvenienced, but for a short time before things get back to normal. There are countries and races, some that have shorter and some that have longer term views of the world. Whether it is accurate or not, the West is more centered on short-term goals (getting what you can get now), and the East on a longer scale, where it takes generations for things to continue to be built and mature. It is the constant battle between the adolescent upstarts and the restrained elderly, old money and the nouveau riche, excitement against security. A long term key to the happiest life I would think is some ideal balance between security and excitement. This always brings me back to the world view of Harry Stack Sullivan, which is exactly this, that if you can properly balance security and excitement life will reach its maximum pleasure/happiness. One additional tenet is that without a base of security, excitement is destructive. Overly secure is boring, overly exciting is deadly.
I have strayed from discussing what makes me think we live in the near future:
- Those that are born lacking something physical in one of their senses still feel great as they make improvements in their daily lives.
- As the saying goes in A.A. parlance, “hitting rock bottom may be good, because there is only one way to go, and that is up”.
So it seems how we feel is based on how we are right now and how we think things will be tomorrow. If the Tao of life is going up we will sleep well, if it is going down we will fret and worry. There is a Taoism that it is the journey of life that is important, not the end, so it is where your next step is going, not where your very last one ends up being.
