“Believing that we just reached the peak of our personal evolution makes us feel good,” Dr. Quoidbach said. “The ‘I wish that I knew then what I know now’ experience might give us a sense of satisfaction and meaning, whereas realizing how transient our preferences and values are might lead us to doubt every decision and generate anxiety.”
In other words, I am going to change just as much in the next ten years as I did transitioning from my 20s to my 30s. So will my parents. So will everybody else I know.
I don’t really feel like my preferences and values are transient though.
Thanks a pantload, science.
Anybody reading this who’s familiar with the concept of spoons… I have one left. When I’m at the center working on things I feel all upbeat, and when I’m home, I’m not, so I guess I’m going out today.
“I don’t really feel like my preferences and values are transient though.”
Transient not in the sense, perhaps, of here today and gone tomorrow, but just so in the sense of our not being the same person, with today being built on all the yesterdays. As always a poet has said it best:
From Tennyson’s Ulysss:
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
Thus – transience as change, evolution, rather than clean breaks between personal epochs…