The Experience of Time
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Lately I’ve been noticing the layers of preferences and how they appear to reflect rates at which I experience the flow of time. If a preference – the result of an earlier choice – is immediate, like what on your dinner plate you will eat first, the distance between the choice, the completion and the enjoyment are minimal and there is very little, if any, deliberate thinking going on. If the choice is that you’d like to change careers, it will take a while before you can enjoy the results.
The time between the initiation of the choice and its fruition is much longer. It will take planning, and a multitude of choices along the way. The result of each choice will have its own brief experience of fulfillment, if one takes the moment to enjoy them, but the end result will be enjoyed after transiting a vast number of choice/appreciation cycles (frequencies).
Now one of the results of long-term planning is that some choices will become automated along the way. That is, they will no longer require conscious thought since they are a single component that is in line with the long-term intent. If you are training for a new line of work, taking your books to class is not something you think about, you just do it. It is a choice that has become a habit and is just part of the process towards your goal. Your long-term pursuit is to have that new career and the fruit of that intent. Its enjoyment will be experienced when you land a job doing what you want to do. You may or may not take the time to experience the satisfaction of individual results along the way. That will depend on what you are focused on in the moment. The long-term goal’s satisfaction will be commensurate with the effort you’ve put into it, but you’ll have to wait until that goal is achieved. …