We curate our presents to furnish our futures with the right kinds of pasts.
This line reads lyrically. It’s very accurate for me… it’s how I find myself furnishing my future, even though the results from this approach don’t always bring me a lot of joy.
In a classic series of studies, Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues exposed volunteers to two different experiences—sixty seconds of moderate pain, and sixty seconds of moderate pain followed by thirty seconds of mild pain. When they asked people which experience they would rather repeat, most chose the second experience, just because it ended better. There is little good to be said about choosing more over-all pain just because the experience ends on the right note.
Oh this is rather daunting. I suppose it’s evidence for why endings tend to affect our overall evaluation of something… whether it’s how a book ended, a tv series, a relationship… the ending skews our view of the entire experience.
A strong line indeed, that first one! It reminds me readily of a line from a review of Bo Burnham's Inside:
It’s a life lived on multiple time scales, he argues, where kids are “planning [their] future to look back at it.”
The latter quote would a part of the "peak-end rule", one of the few things I remember from Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. In our memories, past experiences tend to be defined by a peak moment (low or high), and how they ended. The rest gets blurred out! I guess that insight was the peak of his book for me! :p
The peak-end rule is so interesting. Thanks for sharing! I often have the strongest memories of the most extreme moments during certain experiences. It feels nice to know that there is a term for it!
Sometimes when daydreaming, I visualize our awareness of time as a horizontal line with a single wave in it: the present. Looking at past pictures maybe generates some ripples in the past, planning for next month bends the future.
This article gives an interesting collection of views and thoughts about being in time, both from an individual and societal perspective. Much food for thought on how much we should discount the future (or not)!
Worth a read now and will change how you view things in the future. Looking back, you’ll be glad you took the time. 😉
I’ll see myself out. 😂
This line reads lyrically. It’s very accurate for me… it’s how I find myself furnishing my future, even though the results from this approach don’t always bring me a lot of joy.
Oh this is rather daunting. I suppose it’s evidence for why endings tend to affect our overall evaluation of something… whether it’s how a book ended, a tv series, a relationship… the ending skews our view of the entire experience.
A strong line indeed, that first one! It reminds me readily of a line from a review of Bo Burnham's Inside:
The latter quote would a part of the "peak-end rule", one of the few things I remember from Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. In our memories, past experiences tend to be defined by a peak moment (low or high), and how they ended. The rest gets blurred out! I guess that insight was the peak of his book for me! :p
The peak-end rule is so interesting. Thanks for sharing! I often have the strongest memories of the most extreme moments during certain experiences. It feels nice to know that there is a term for it!
🆙
Sometimes when daydreaming, I visualize our awareness of time as a horizontal line with a single wave in it: the present. Looking at past pictures maybe generates some ripples in the past, planning for next month bends the future.
This article gives an interesting collection of views and thoughts about being in time, both from an individual and societal perspective. Much food for thought on how much we should discount the future (or not)!