Remembering things that haven't happened yet

Very sad, but beautiful. The following passage especially stuck with me:<p>&quot;Researchers Gilbert, Quiodbach and Wilson coined a term called the “end of history illusion,” which describes people’s tendency to look back on the last ten or twenty years of their life and concede that they’ve changed a great deal. Yet when they’re asked to project how much they’ll change in the next decade, they tend to believe they’ll change much less, if at all, as if all their life was leading up to this moment, in which they’ve achieved peak selfhood.<p>&quot;The illusion protects us…from realizing how transient our preferences and values are which might lead us to doubt every decision and generate anxiety.<p>&quot;Sounds like the researchers read Derek Parfit. I’m currently experiencing whatever the opposite of the “end of history illusion” is. Let’s call it: “The beginning of potentially infinite unknowable and yet inevitable futures reality.” Okay, that’s kind of a mouthful. I’m not good at pithy marketing slogans. Knowledge of Jake’s impending death brings with it the certainty that my life is about to undergo tremendous, nonconsensual upheaval, inevitably changing my preferences and values, though I don’t know any details except that I’ll change in likely vast and unexpected ways. Without the comforting illusion of stasis, what can I do to assuage the anxiety caused by reality? That’s what the videos are for.&quot;

&gt; When Jake looks at me, he sees me at 25, showing up to our first date in a grey mini-dress, black boots and red lipstick. He sees me at 29 in a striped bra and panty set in our 35th story Seattle hotel room, pressing me against the cold glass. And he also sees me as I am now. I’m all these ages at once, as he is to me. Love isn’t just blind to ugliness, but to decay. Look at two 80-year-olds gazing at each other like teenagers and you’ll know what I mean.<p>I wish more people knew this. I think if they did, they would value each other more.

Tangentially related, if you are ill, I would implore you to read Seneca&#x27;s Letter 78 to Lucilius [0]:<p><i>You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped.</i><p><i>There is, I assure you, a place for virtue even upon a bed of sickness. It is not only the sword and the battle-line that prove the soul alert and unconquered by fear; a man can display bravery even when wrapped in his bed-clothes. You have something to do: wrestle bravely with disease. If it shall compel you to nothing, beguile you to nothing, it is a notable example that you display. O what ample matter were there for renown, if we could have spectators of our sickness! Be your own spectator; seek your own applause.</i><p>And if you have lost, or are losing, someone you love, read Letter 63 [1]:<p><i>So too it cannot but be that the names of those whom we have loved and lost come back to us with a sort of sting; but there is a pleasure even in this sting. For, as my friend Attalus used to say: &quot;The remembrance of lost friends is pleasant in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste, or as in extremely old wines it is their very bitterness that pleases us. Indeed, after a certain lapse of time, every thought that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed.&quot; If we take the word of Attalus for it, &quot;to think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey; the recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness. Yet who will deny that even these things, which are bitter and contain an element of sourness, do serve to arouse the stomach?&quot;</i><p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moral_letters_to_Lucilius&#x2F;Letter_78" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moral_letters_to_Lucilius&#x2F;Let...</a> [1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moral_letters_to_Lucilius&#x2F;Letter_63" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moral_letters_to_Lucilius&#x2F;Let...</a>

One way of anticipating who you&#x27;ll become over time, I&#x27;ve realized, is to look at your parents. The same flaws and frailties you see there are the ones that will manifest and cause terrible in your life. The same values and decision making processes will guide you down parallel paths. You will find that the challenges they are going through are the same ones you will encounter one day.<p>Be kind to your parents, and hope your children will be as kind to you.<p>This was a beautiful read.

That almost made me cry, damn.<p>My partner and I are together for 5 years now. We&#x27;ll probably move into the same apartment in around a year and are both in our mid-twenties. We have serious long-term plans together (obviously).<p>The thought of loosing them to an illness or accident is very soul-crushing and I don&#x27;t even want to imagine what the author of this article is going through currently, and will have to endure once tragedy has struck.<p>I really like this part: &quot;Love isn’t just blind to ugliness, but to decay.&quot;

&gt; Sounds like the researchers read Derek Parfit. I’m currently experiencing whatever the opposite of the “end of history illusion” is. Let’s call it: “The beginning of potentially infinite unknowable and yet inevitable futures reality.”<p>Sounds like existential anguish. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;existentialcomics.com&#x2F;comic&#x2F;306" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;existentialcomics.com&#x2F;comic&#x2F;306</a>

A simultaneously beautiful and heart wrenching story wrapped in truly exquisite literary presentation.

&gt; I’ve talked to friends who’ve lost a spouse, sometimes to death and sometimes to savage divorce, and they universally say that one of the unexpectedly hardest things is not being able to ask: Remember that one place? Or that time? Remember when I…?<p>Wow, the author managed to capture the feeling of loss perfectly here.

It was a sad, yet beautiful read. Some of my fav passage from the article.<p>&quot;Researchers Gilbert, Quiodbach and Wilson coined a term called the “end of history illusion,” which describes people’s tendency to look back on the last ten or twenty years of their life and concede that they’ve changed a great deal. Yet when they’re asked to project how much they’ll change in the next decade, they tend to believe they’ll change much less, if at all, as if all their life was leading up to this moment, in which they’ve achieved peak selfhood&quot;<p>&quot;Until 2020, I thought Jake and I would live in New York forever. New York is so fun! But, realistically, we stayed too long, our goals and priorities changed, and the cost and struggle of the city stopped outweighing the desire for a kid and to be close to family.&quot;

Maybe get as much footage as possible for later AI can recreate and even generate conversations in 3d in vr, sounds unhealthy however. You need to move on in a healthy way