"When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years."
I think this article dances around what I believe to be the main reason we don't expect ourselves to change: we're afraid of uncertainty. When we're little kids, we know we're going to change. We know in a few years we're going to go to elementary school. A few years after that middle school, then high school. Then comes the largest change of them all (if you make it be) of going to college. For me it's been the largest change. I go to school 400 miles away from where I've grown up my whole life. Not only do we know we're going to change during college, it's expected of us. But then after college, what is there? Once we find a job we've settled into, we're told to stay there. The longer we stay, the more of a promotion we'll get, the more money we'll get. Only some of these people have the drive enough to go on to become CEOs. Sure, we could leave this job for another, but we're afraid of the uncertainty unemployment brings. However, if change is really what we want, it's this uncertainty I believe we have to look forward to. Because when we're growing up, it's the uncertainty of what our new school will be like, or our new soccer team, or our new home, that opens us up to the possibility to change.She resisted the idea of change...
I think a lot of us do this. We try to make everything so certain, so predictable, that change is forced to go outside and smoke a cigarette and no longer be part of our lives. That's why I love uncertainty. Who knows what kind of a person you'll be after you experience something completely different? It's not that we aren't the best person we could ever be currently, but rather, growing is forever. With everything there is to learn on this magnificent planet, and with more experiences being discovered each and every day, personal change is something we could easily experience. We just have to not preoccupy ourselves with certainty.
Pish posh. I'm not at all surprised at who I am. In 1992 I painted a Skinny Puppy logo on my leather jacket. In 2002 I put a Skinny Puppy logo on my car. In 2012 I thought about putting a Skinny Puppy logo on my helmet until I realized I still had a Skinny Puppy logo on my jacket because I was still wearing it. If you're surprised by who you are and look back on who you were with chagrin you're doing something wrong. The only thing that upsets me is that I've spent two years in the place I truly love and over 20 trying to get back there. On a related note, it appears that my tribe is one of the few that gets it.
So you're saying that you're the same person now as you were at 15?
I think that might not be a fair question, considering the large amount of maturing everyone does in their teenage years. I tend to agree with the article, though. I'd say a certain amount of chagrin for one's past opinions & perspectives is a natural consequence of, well, growth. I certainly hope that I remain somewhat malleable as I age. A counterpoint, in the form of a passage from The Great Gatsby, comes to mind, however: I take from this a sense that too much shifting between opinions, too much effort spent on being fully "open" to new perspectives is, in the end, a fruitless endeavor. I think, as in most things in life, there's a balance to be struck between malleability in one's opinions and the time-cultivated inertia one has to resist great changes.I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram — life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
So you'd say that there is an end to our own growing?
Yes! This is how I feel! I am exactly the same person I was at 14, I like to say. I'm just more that person. For me, age hasn't been a morphing of one identity to another. It has, rather, been the peeling off of layers, a distillation. I am a fine aged whiskey, or cheese (my kids would say, snort!). I am the exact person I remember when I think of chasing fireflies and sleeping under a blanket fort when I was a kid. I still have dreams of traveling into space, still love nature as much as my fellow humans, still sneak chocolate into bed. I'm the Same Me, just aged, refined, forged in the fire of experience and dispair. I just keep getting better. But I'm still Me, and exactly, 100 percent, the person I thought I would be. I may not have the career I thought I would have, or be married to a Star Trek prince. But I'm that same weird kid with pigtails and a sense of crazy wonder. Yeah.
I am somewhat excited at the possibility of a different future self. I'm sure that I am guilty of the behavior in the study to some extent, but I have typically taken decision-making with permanent consequences very seriously. I've only seriously considered a tattoo once. I would have gotten it 15 years ago, and it would still make sense to me now. More than a design, it would have been a reminder. Maybe it's because I have been through a life change that abruptly altered my character. However, I fully expect to grow into a different person. I would be disappointed to think that I won't. I also have a number of friends that I have known for more than 20 years. I enjoy watching the changes in all of us.
I have two tattoos. Both are things that things that are very important to me currently. If in the future I don't care about them any more (which I pray doesn't happen), then they'll become reminders of my past self, of a person who believed so strongly in the harmony of music or living simply. And sure, the possibility exists that I'll regret them. But at least I'll be able to look at them and be joyful about my youth.
Interesting stuff. What I find most surprising is that even after reading the article I find it difficult to imagine a future self which differs significantly from who I am now. I think it might be easier for me to imagine a different person entirely, and then think of how I might become that person, and the timeframe involved in those events. Because trying to predict an internal change seems nearly impossible.
I'm not sure, that's why I asked. I figure age would determine how a person thought of their future self and with how you responded, I figured you'd be in your 20s.
I'm right there with you, I just turned 21 yesterday.
And you can function today!? You might wanna try turning 21 again ;)
Oh, I definitely had to have a lot of sleep in order to get rid of my hangover haha. We had a crazy party at my place that consisted of a 30 minute jam on a blues, a dude ripping down our shower curtain, and a complete depletion of our alcohol supply. It was a blast.
Imagining the future is necessarily an exercise in counterfactual thinking, which is in any case an extremely well-developed cognitive skill of our species. The trouble with counterfactuals is that they're both absolutely beneficial to our survival, and incredibly tricky to do with any amount of fidelity. Instead, counterfactuals are most likely mediated by a sort of "primary cause bias." That is, we tend to prefer to perceive events as being driven primarily by significant and singular events. Just think about history: the Stamp Act and similar abuses caused the Revolutionary War, maritime abuses caused the War of 1812, slavery caused the Civil War, a stock asset bubble caused the Great Crash. So I suspect that the linked phenomenon is the same thing. It's the little things that make life, but we're not really capable of meaningfully conceptualizing that. So instead we look at counterfactuals and try to think about the big things: will I get that promotion, will I have children, will I buy the next more expensive car, will my 401k tank?
It's strange how much cognitive dissonance there is with people about this. As much as I'm willing to believe that I might well be a completely different person tomorrow, it just doesn't seem as likely as me being almost identical. Sure, there are millions of possibilities of how I might end up, but we can still think about the possibilities percentage wise. Just as a guess, I'd bet that over 90% of possibilities have you being a completely different human being, apart from the obvious (family, appearances, etc.).
I think the problem in prediction is the sheer wealth of possibilities. While it's easy to say "I will likely change a lot in the next decade", it's hard to say how, or even in what areas. Because there are so many potential changes in different directions, accurate prediction is effectively impossible. Attempting to average out the varying possibilities leaves a notable lack of changes. Similarly to how, when flipping a coin 10,000 times it is unlikely to get exactly 5000 heads and 5000 tails, it's unlikely for you to end up very similar to how you currently are, the expected value is still in the middle. Any preparations we can make can only be based on what knowledge we currently have not the least of which is who we currently are.
That's how I feel as well, there are so many external things that can happen to alter how you change, and that's something you can't normally predict or plan for. Or you could change whatever plan you have set forth due to new interests arising, it's easy enough to change, it's hard to say how.
Are you saying then that it's best we be certain in ourselves so that we can handle change reasonably? If so, would you say you were certain in yourself as a 10 year old, ready to move on to any sort of change?
Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. 10 year old me wasn't aware of all the changes happening, but always excited and looking forward to moving up in school and reaching middle school, and things like that.
So what about now? Are you excited for any kind of change?
I'm excited, but also increasingly nervous. The next big change that I can foresee is moving away from college and working at my next internship, which should be in a couple of months.
Should be, but doesn't have to be! I'm just saying, don't anticipate anything.