Be here now, whispers the mindfulness movement, and there’s lots to recommend that advice. Let’s face it: any other arrangement would defy the laws of physics.
But as with any idea that a whole lot of people rush to adopt,
there’s the danger of overreach. That’s the case, I would argue, in our
commitment to The Almighty Now.
Ever since the positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published his work linking so-called “mind wandering” with unhappiness, many folks, already sold on the very real benefits of mindfulness meditation,
have taken what I believe is an unreasonable next step: to assume that
the present is where we ought to aspire to be, always. And therefore,
when we catch ourselves drifting back to yesterday’s awkward
parent-teacher interview, or leaping ahead to tomorrow’s nervous-making
client presentation — we should lead ourselves, like a wild horse,
gently back to the present.
But mind wandering isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a very good
thing. If we’re stuck creatively, for example, the mind-wandering state
can be a natural “reset” button, as the psychologist Daniel Levitin puts
it, opening us to creative thinking channels not available to us in the
narrow tunnel of the Now. If we’re stuck emotionally, it can free up
deeply suppressed feelings. (If we’re stuck in an elevator, ok, the
place to be is in the present, shouting for the maintenance guy.)
Indeed, when it’s done deliberately – as deliberately as, well,
mindfulness meditation – mental time travel has all sorts of benefits.
It can make us happier, more empathic, more productive, even more
frugal. It can make us better parents, better partners, better friends.
GOING BACK
“Stare at a photograph of someone you dated long, long ago,” suggests the writer Chuck Klosterman.
“The emotional reaction you’ll have — unless you’re weird or depressed
or kind of terrible — is positive. Even if this person broke your heart,
you will effortlessly remember all the feelings you had that allowed
your heart to be broken.”
Klosterman, America’s unofficial poet laureate of nostalgia, has a
jeweler’s eye for real nostalgia vs. fake sentimental posturing. (How
can you feel “nostalgia” for an era you never lived through?) Genuine
nostalgia – which literally just means “a longing for home” – is a
useful emotional tool. That photo of your ex, which arouses such strong
feelings, is a powerful emotional prime. It pulls from your files an
earlier draft of yourself, a big-haired actor in a play that no longer
exists. That draft self is a useful benchmark for how far you’ve come.
In his “Lifeprofit”
project, Dustin Garis encourages people, in the otherwise regimented
routine of their days, to try to occasionally construct a day so novel
they will never forget it. Building a super-interesting day is like
chopping firewood: it heats you twice. The first payoff is the
experience itself. The second is the pleasure of luxuriating in the memories of the fun you had.
The Canadian developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld prescribes reminiscence therapy
as a tool for parents struggling to stay connected to their kids.
"Where did that happy family go?" Mom or Dad might wonder, staring
across the gulf of the dinner table as their hairy, surly teens stare at
their phones. Now bring out the photos of that summer holiday in the
Okanagan. Look! Those expressions don’t lie. We are having fun together.
This is us, not long ago. That family in the picture, that is the
mothership. It’s not going anywhere, no matter how many space walks you
kids decide to take.
Reminiscence is also the royal road to gratitude, the benefits of which psychologists and philosophers continue to explore. “Happiness
does not lead to gratitude; gratitude leads to happiness,” the
Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says in A.J. Jacobs’ new book Thanks a Thousand.
Not long ago I ran into the drama teacher from my high school. Fondly
summoning those years, he told me how parents used to buttonhole him
every June to tell him he’d changed their shy
childrens’ lives by drawing them out of their shells. “How many of
those students ever called you up in later years to say thanks?” I
asked. He shook his head. “None,” he said. It’s hard to know whether
that was true. You see, this drama teacher is now suffering from dementia.
Recent memories aren’t reliable. If he’d been my teacher I’d have
hugged him right there on the spot. Instead, I promptly went home and
wrote a letter to my favorite elementary-school teacher, thanking them
belatedly for what they did for a kid they probably have no recollection
of.
JUMPING FORWARD
In 2011, a group of psychologists from Stanford, NYU and elsewhere conducted an experiment that’s become famous in the field of behavioral economics.
Subjects were asked to manage some pretend money. But the
experimental group, before they made any decisions, was first shown
digitally aged versions of themselves. They were being primed to “see”
themselves decades down the road, in their retirement
years. The photos were a reality check. They said: This will be you,
Ebenezer. Unless you win the lottery you’ll be supporting yourself on
your savings. Those experimental subjects managed their money
differently than the controls did. They socked away more for the future.
One of the reasons Warren Buffet is so rich is that he routinely
imagined his future self. “As a young man he’d ask himself, ‘Do I really
want to spend $300,000 on a haircut?” his biography
reveals. That, he calculated, is how much he’d save over a lifetime if
he invested the haircut money instead. It’s rare for people to vividly
imagine themselves even a few days into the future, let alone decades.
Which may be why there aren’t many Warren Buffets, and why we need
exercises like this to force us to do it.
What if we could trick ourselves into seeing through the eyes of a
future self? As an experiment, my friend Jeff Harris used to buy
magazines but not read them. Instead he’d seal them up in a paper bag
and put them away for precisely three years. And then he’d take them out
and page through them. If he encountered a story about someone or
something he hadn’t heard of, he wouldn’t bother to read that story —
because that person was, he presumed, a kind of false prophet whose
ideas had failed to gain traction. But if Jeff had heard of them, he’s
hungrily dive into the story — because this person was the real deal;
their ideas had stood the test of time. And there words here were like
the early light of a living star, a perspective fresher than the one
everyone else was reading.
Time zones present a perfect chance to play these kinds of temporal
games. About our friends in Australia we say, “For them it’s already
tomorrow” — a bizarre notion that fosters the idea that time is elastic,
and that thinking about our distant pals requires almost a leap of
physics. Fun by any measure.
Recently, the writer Lauren DePino tried this
from Malaysia, where she was living while her cinematographer husband
shot a movie in the jungle. She imagined her friends and family back
home in Philly. It gave her peace to know they were twelve hours behind
her. When she was conscious, they were unconscious,
mostly. When she was in the light, they were in the dark. That time
difference was a kind of psychological bulwark against loss. As she
thought about the people she loved back home, they were safe in their
beds. “I don’t have to worry about their getting into a car accident,
because they’re under the covers sleeping. I don’t have to fear
they’ll fall and injure their heads, because they’re not upright and
walking. Conversely, when they’re awake and animated, out in the
dangerous world, sleep numbs my anxiety.”
Now, it could be I’ve spun this elaborate argument just to
rationalize my own behavior. To justify why I myself spend so much time
in a fog of imaginative reverie: gazing back, peeking forward, wondering
where I just set down my keys or wallet or messenger bag. But I do
think there’s value in escaping the present moment, in making regular
appointments with our past and future selves. The present moment is a
mighty thin edge on which to build our forever house. Especially now,
when when the present moment can feel so dire.
AUTHOR
Bruce Grierson is a social-science writer based in British Columbia.
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