The Anxious Time Traveller

I've always had a voice somewhere within me compelling me to reach my "potential". To not reach one's potential is a bad thing, that much I gathered from what teachers used to tell my parents every much-feared and intensely loathed Parent's Day. The Parable Of The Talents (Matthew 25:14–30) then turned this crime of omission into a sin so grave that you, the "worthless servant" would be cast out "into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

With this context, I can better understand the part of me that encourages me (perhaps too enthusiastically at times) to reach my potential. After all, doing so is a matter of survival both in this ephemeral, material world as well as the eternal one. I cannot blame it for its alarmism, for spurring me to action with anxiety and dread.

I also understand that it is non-cognitive. It seems to perceive of a threat without understanding the nature of that threat. Its way of dealing with the existential threat is to trigger a fight-or-flight response. This state however is definitely counterproductive to solving the cause of the problem: figuring out how to fulfill your potential. It's akin to being forced to solve a Rubik's Cube at gunpoint.

This is especially the case if, like many humans, you are what I call a "peripheral visionary" without a clear, focused end in mind. Some of us want to live the way our ancestors did for tens of thousands of years - one day at a time and focus on being rather than doing. It's hard to imagine our hunter gatherer ancestors having ambitions beyond survival: catching prey, finding water, learning and teaching skills, finding shelter, mating, entertaining and expressing yourself through music and art.

Their lives were inconceivably risky compared to our modern lives. The conditions under which our forefathers lived did not allow them to project themselves into far flung futures the way I can. I can see myself saving up to retire in a Spanish coastal town, sipping Sangria and reading a book. I have a reasonable idea that if I save up €X and earn Y% of interest annually then I can bring this vision, this potential to fruition.

Moreover, as you travel through time in your own head, your futures branch out further and further. I could just as easily imagine myself in a Midwestern suburb in the US, sitting in my current home, or travelling in a camper across the Balkans.

The point isn't whether our projections are realistic or accurate. The point is that they are possible. I would argue that long-term projection is one of the major cause-effects of civilisation. Civilisation requires planning of some kind and creates the stability needed to make reliable plans.

Contrast this to the sort of vision our ancestors might have been able to have. The tenuousness of their existence makes long-term planning laughable at best and dangerous at worst (imagine saving money in the middle of a warzone). Even if they did see themselves 30, 40, 50 years into the future, what would they have seen? Probably themselves doing the same things they were doing in the present: hunting, gathering, mating, drawing, dancing... So even if it were plausible, it would have been pointless to mull your future for any length of time because you were essentially living it.

I bring up our ancestors because I believe that this voice calling me to action is an ancient evolutionary tool trying to solve a modern problem. This is why some of us may end up in a negative feedback loop. We get anxious about fulfilling one vision out of an infinite number, all competing to be the "right" vision. This anxiety makes it harder to choose, which makes us all the more anxious, and so on and so forth.

Any solution then must include some way of breaking free of this cycle by addressing the causes. The ideal would be choosing to pursue a specific goal, but since that is not possible you'd have to remove the choice in the first place. Make the conscious decision to take a break from time travelling beyond a certain distance and allow yourself to enjoy your current existence if you can, and if not, you can focus on the immediate problems that need addressing.