Different people perceive time in different ways.

Some people are highly focused in the present. They get a great deal of stimulation and information from the here and now. They live their lives moment to moment, and are great at dealing with things immediately and with great drive, energy, and focus. To them, life is an ever-unfolding series of moments to enjoy or endure. They tend to live life in the present and let the future take care of itself.

To them, the future is not real. Not emotionally speaking. Sure, they understand the basics of controlling the future by controlling the present, but on a fundamental level, the future is a vague and mysterious place, and they spend very little of their time thinking about it. After all, the world is full of possibilities and variables, so who really knows what is going to happen? The only thing you can truly know is what is happening right now.

Contrast that to the future oriented person. They feel that the present is only the place where the future begins, and that the secret to a good life is, via a series of carefully planned actions, control the future and make it a better place for themselves. They know that nobody can control their future perfectly, but they still have faith that they can control their outcomes via forethought and understands to a sufficient degree that they can make their lives better, or at least less bad.

To these people, the future is very real. They experience potential outcomes almost as if they were really happening. This feel for the future is the what guides a future oriented future. They are constantly analyzing all the variables in order to find the best path that leads to the best future, and plotting a series of steps to get there.

To the present oriented person, life is a broad, flat plain filled with things to explore. To the future oriented person, life is a staircase leading ever upward into the future.

Both of these types have their strengths and weaknesses. The present oriented person excels at handling complex, stressful situations in realtime. Because they do not require a plan before they act and because they live fully in the present, they can experience and react to life with full immediacy.

Also, because they give little thought to the future, they are less prone to the sorts of neuroses that are based upon anxiety about future events. In fact, for the most part, present oriented people have a much more positive outlook on life and a great deal more optimism than their future fixated friends.

On the other hand, it could almost go without saying that if you don’t think about the future, you have little control over it. For future oriented people, long term planning is extremely unpleasant and they will avoid it whenever they can. As a result, the things that only come with long term planning and patience will never come their way except, perhaps, by accident.

Without an emotional connection to the future, past oriented people’s ability to influence the world is severely curtailed unless they connect themselves with someone more future oriented.

The benefits of being future oriented are obvious. The future oriented person’s emotional connection to the future has the potential to be a powerful tool that leads one to an ever improving future.

Also, this emotional connection allows the person to form an attachment to a future goal that allows the future oriented person to derive emotional satisfaction from progress towards that goal, and this is vitally important for maintaining the long term motivation necessary to sustain someone emotionally through all those long term steps.

To the future oriented person, every step towards a long term goal is its own reward.

That is why, for the most part, while the present oriented person might be happier in the short term, it is the future oriented people who run the world, and thus, rule it.

Speaking of happiness, one of the negative aspects of being future-oriented is that it can lead to depression and/or pessimism. The future-oriented person can lose their emotional connection to their long term goals, and without the ability to recharge their batteries in the present, it can be very hard for them to get things going again.

Also, their ability to feel the future is not a psychic power or mystic insight. It is a faculty of the brain, and as such, can be influences by other emotional issues and become wildly inaccurate. Despair can cause it to only produce negative readings, thus reinforcing the idea that the future can only be worse than the present, and thus withdrawing from the world seems like it is the the only possible solution.

The real solution is for the future oriented person to put down the telescope and take a look around their immediate world and learn to take more joy and pleasure in what is going on (or what COULD be going on) in their lives right now.

This will reboot their motivational structure and draw them back from the edge of despair because their lives are just plain more rewarding now, and the future oriented person can both see and feel that some of the paths that their sense of the future senses might actually lead to something good.

And no despair can survive that for long.

So as you can see, the world needs both kinds of people. A world of only future oriented people would be an emotionally desolate place where the lack of immediate pleasures would lead people to becoming dour, sour, and depressed. Despite their future orientation, by the time any of their long term plans come to fruition, they are too emotionally numb to enjoy it.

You have to live through today to get to tomorrow.

And a planet of only present-oriented people would be a chaotic mess of unenlightened hedonism and thoughtless action in which even the bare minimum amount of civilization would be impossible.

It takes a lot of different kind of people to make the world go round.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh, and PS. I know that I have left out past oriented people, but I am not sure they exist, and if they do, they just seem so sad that I don’t like to think about them. Sorry.