Great Books

the future is real, but the past is all made up.

Nietzsche on "the power of forgetting" – which is the same as the power to be "unhistorical" toward the past.

(excerpt is from "On the Advantages of Disadvantages of History for Life" – the early little essay that I consider to be perhaps the most important indicator of what Nietzsche is up to)

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Would love to have this ability. I don't. I know people who don't and people who don't. I think it's 99% how you are wired. You can improve a little, but for most either you live are able to 'forget' and live in the present or you live always aware of past and future. Appreciate the quote and thought.

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That's a good thought. I love thinking about life and communicating through the grid of story. And I think you are write we narrate the past a certain way and narrate the future in a certain way. I think that--how we narrate it to ourselves---could be the place to make real growth and progress. Similarly I think self talk can be worked on, regardless of wiring--it's just harder for some and easier for others. Appreciate your prompted nuance there.

I could absolutely see this as related to natural tendencies of brain and body wiring.  I do wonder whether / how it can be trained.

My one thought is that if you realize the deep truth that all remembering is necessarily a kind of "story" that we tell (not in the sense that it's fake, or merely an opinion, but in the sense that in every remembered perception, we *had* to leave out some details, accentuate others, apply patterns, etc) then you can really embrace that you have some power over the past. Not in a magical way, but in the sense that *you* not only have the ability but the necessity of making the frame for it. And the frame can really impact  the effect.