GRADE: A

Professor Lappin

Psychology 115A

September 6, 2000

A Human Perspective on Interpretations of the Future

"But when it’s all said and done I’ll be forty before I know it with a forty on the porch telling stories with a bottle of Jack, two grandkids in my lap…"¹ In his song "Drug Ballad," the rapper Eminem speaks as a young man who envisions his life passing him quickly by. At the age of 26, he is already contemplating the concepts of retiring and helping to raise his grandchildren. This song is a modern example of the awesome human capacity for foresight, which grants us the ability to envision our goals and dreams realized. J. B. Bronowski states in his work The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination that "the brain has had to solve the problem of achieving fine discrimination with a coarse apparatus."² How do humans produce such vivid visualizations of their own futures? Do our interpretations of the unknown affect the way we live our lives and our chances for happiness?

The period of time between high school graduation and matriculation into college is one of introspection and speculation. During the past summer I often found myself daydreaming during work or at home in the evenings. I was enchanted by my vision of what the next four years of my life would be like. A plethora of questions swam through my mind. What kinds of interesting people would I meet? Would college classes be significantly more difficult as compared to the ones I was accustomed to in high school? What would my dorm look like? Who was my roommate, the person I was destined to live with for the next year of my life? Would I find wonderful, supportive friends like I had in high school?

As I pondered these and thousands of other questions which ran through my brain at any given moment, I formulated in my mind the scenario I considered most desirable. I would make friends with many people who shared my interests and desires, and meet a member of the opposite sex whom I could love on many levels. I would astonish my professors with my intellect and my ability to communicate concepts clearly and articulately. I would find a way to impress the varsity baseball coach with my superior athletic prowess. And this was just the first week! Although some negative thoughts occasionally crept into my mind, I pushed those out quickly as my optimism overpowered any uncertainties that I harbored. Therein lies the key to a human’s ability to achieve: When a person envisions and believes in a positive future, he gives himself the confidence to implement that future as he sees fit.

The human mind has been endowed with the incredible ability to think in four dimensions. Memories of our past affect the way we approach tasks and obstacles in the present and future, on both conscious and subconscious levels. Some memories take on the form of applied instinct, as when a person automatically jerks his hand away when it gets too close to a hot stove. Other memories ingrained deeper in our minds affect our interactions with other humans. For example, I believe that the way I dealt with the experience of entering high school has had a positive influence on the way I entered college. Any comparison of the two periods must begin with the caveat that my physical, emotional, and intellectual maturity levels are naturally much higher at this time than they were four years ago. However, I think a comparison is still valid in view of the fact that my personality has not undergone a radical shift since freshman year.

The first day of high school was an exciting, though scary event in my life. I came from a small parochial grade school where my class totaled 35 students. Naturally, everyone knew each other, and friendships were close-knit. The school I entered was (at the time) the largest public high school in the state. To compound matters, many of my friends from grade school attended the other high school in my town. So, I began my high school journey knowing approximately five of my five hundred new classmates. Through the few acquaintances I had, I met many new people, some amazing, some deceitful, some loving, some shallow. I made a name for myself through my academic achievements, and developed a reputation as a shy, quiet person.

I enjoyed high school immensely, but something in the back of my mind told me that the social aspect of school could have been even more astounding had I been more outgoing in my interactions with people. I didn’t date frequently in high school because as shy as I was around males, the bashfulness increased five-fold when in the presence of beautiful females. One consistent theme throughout my summertime musings was that college was my chance to make a fresh start with new people who had no preconceptions of my reputation or personality. I decided that I was going to be more outgoing and open towards people. I took the risk of making myself vulnerable to people, trusting in human nature to respond warmly. For the first time in my life, I have the confidence to approach women I’ve never met and begin a conversation, instead of waiting passively for someone else to make an introduction. I have made close male friends by commenting on our common interests, instead of waiting for them to make observations or ask questions about me. I am, to some degree, making the internalized fantasy I concocted come true. Sure, I haven’t found my soul mate after one week, and I haven’t earned a Commodore baseball jersey. But I find myself more self-confident and open than I ever was in high school. The only possible explanation for this sweeping change in my persona is that I have externalized my internal daydreams in an attempt to make them come true. The incredible powers of the human mind are its capacity to apply knowledge to imagination, and its ability to integrate imagination with the real world, thus controlling, to an extent, its own destiny and future.

Notes