Most of my expertise in psychological matters comes from fortune cookies.
It is commonly presented as a life and death battle: the past versus the present versus the future.
"Don't live in the past, it's over and done with"
"Live in the present, that's all we have"
"Prepare for the future, it'll be here before you know it"
One critical thing I noticed recently is that living in the present, today's dominant advice, has a generally unrecognized downside: the short life it gives happiness. It is generally accepted that the lion's share of happiness comes from
the attainment of desired values, the achievement of desired goals, and it ought be easy to recognize, too, that they were garnered in the past, and that failing to think about, harbor specific memories of, and relish the past, is probably happy's deadliest enemy.
I have too often seen a truckload of happiness, loaded with dear relationships, laughter and good fortune from the past, skid and crash on a few drops of spilt milk in the present. Haven't you?
They say that the failure to remember the failures of the past dooms man to repeat them. Perhaps so. But the failure to savor the glories of the past costs even more.
Of course we should delight in where we are walking, but we ought treasure where we've come from and dream of what's ahead.
Past, Present, Future are not enemies of each other. They are reflections of each other, each contributing to the enjoyment of the other.
Anyone got another cookie?
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