Sometimes I ask myself: “A bunch of cool stuff seems to be happening in the present. So why can’t I move faster and let these things in? Why do I feel stuck by past things?”
Well, experience compounds. One reason childhood events can be so influential isn’t just that they happened when you were at a formative time and developing your models. In addition, the fact that you pick them up early means they’ve had the privilege of being part of your thought processes for longer. They’re more well-worn tools.
Then, there’s also the default answer that each additional year of your life is, relative to the amount of years you’ve lived, a lesser amount. EX: From year 6 to 7, you’ve gained an extra ~15% of your total lifespan in new experiences. Whereas from 26 to 27, you’ve gained closer to 4% of your total lifespan in new experiences.
But, I’d like every year to be measured more equally with one another. I feel like cool stuff is passing by me right now, and I’m just slow on the uptake. I’m not taking it in!
Yes, you can get set in your older ways of thinking, and you will have seen more with each successive year. But experientially speaking I’d like to get my brain to also pay more attention to the recent stuff.
I guess one hacky way to do this would be to spend more time ruminating on the present (which is also harder because if you’ve lived for 30 years, then by the same proportionality argument, there’s just less stuff to think about if you restrict yourself to years 29-30).
I’m confused because there is also:
Experience as a Sliding Window:
There’s some sort of cutoff point where I might be able to recall things, but it no longer feels “recent” or directly connected to my identity.
The feeling of recency is quite interesting to me because it seems to imply that important things are going to fade over time. And if you want to preserve certain parts of your identity, there’s some sort of “upkeep” you’ll need to pay, i.e. having more of those sort of experiences consistently so they stay in recent memory.
Anyway, that’s if you equate identity with memory, and that’s definitely an oversimplification. But, whatever.
As new things filter in, older things drop out. I’m unsure how to square this with the theory of compounding experience. Presumably if something has effects, even if it falls out of the window, then things it influenced can continue to resound, ala domino effect, but that feels quite contrived. The obvious answer, of course, is that there are several factors at play.
Experience As Compounding:
Sometimes I ask myself: “A bunch of cool stuff seems to be happening in the present. So why can’t I move faster and let these things in? Why do I feel stuck by past things?”
Well, experience compounds. One reason childhood events can be so influential isn’t just that they happened when you were at a formative time and developing your models. In addition, the fact that you pick them up early means they’ve had the privilege of being part of your thought processes for longer. They’re more well-worn tools.
Then, there’s also the default answer that each additional year of your life is, relative to the amount of years you’ve lived, a lesser amount. EX: From year 6 to 7, you’ve gained an extra ~15% of your total lifespan in new experiences. Whereas from 26 to 27, you’ve gained closer to 4% of your total lifespan in new experiences.
But, I’d like every year to be measured more equally with one another. I feel like cool stuff is passing by me right now, and I’m just slow on the uptake. I’m not taking it in!
Yes, you can get set in your older ways of thinking, and you will have seen more with each successive year. But experientially speaking I’d like to get my brain to also pay more attention to the recent stuff.
I guess one hacky way to do this would be to spend more time ruminating on the present (which is also harder because if you’ve lived for 30 years, then by the same proportionality argument, there’s just less stuff to think about if you restrict yourself to years 29-30).
I’m confused because there is also:
Experience as a Sliding Window:
There’s some sort of cutoff point where I might be able to recall things, but it no longer feels “recent” or directly connected to my identity.
The feeling of recency is quite interesting to me because it seems to imply that important things are going to fade over time. And if you want to preserve certain parts of your identity, there’s some sort of “upkeep” you’ll need to pay, i.e. having more of those sort of experiences consistently so they stay in recent memory.
Anyway, that’s if you equate identity with memory, and that’s definitely an oversimplification. But, whatever.
As new things filter in, older things drop out. I’m unsure how to square this with the theory of compounding experience. Presumably if something has effects, even if it falls out of the window, then things it influenced can continue to resound, ala domino effect, but that feels quite contrived. The obvious answer, of course, is that there are several factors at play.