This post continues my previous post about the future. My sister brought up a good question: "I wonder, if we knew exactly what it would bring us, would life be easier or harder?" I'm sure there are many different angles that this can be looked at, and neither one is necessarily wrong or right.
In my opinion, it depends. See what I did there, took the easy way out.
No, but seriously, I tried to look at it in 2 ways. The first would be if the future had something good in store for me, and the obvious other way of looking at it is if there was something bad waiting for me. Now, just to be clear this "good or bad" thing can be anything at all: a life event, a material object, an emotional conquest, etc.
Knowing the future would take away the satisfaction of reaching that good "thing" and looking back like, "wow, look how hard I had to work to get here. I'm proud of myself!" However, knowing what's to come gives you something to look forward to...something to keep fighting for. For example, have you ever booked a trip somewhere and from the moment you paid for the hotel, plane, etc. you began to look forward to it. I know it was like that, in a way, for me when I went to college. There were times when I felt like I couldn't go on, but I knew in the end it was going to benefit me, and I could look at my degree and say, "Look at this...I did it!"
What about knowing something "bad?" Well, some will look at it and think, "OK, what can I do to prepare myself for it?" Or, even better, the person might think, "OK, what can I do to prevent it, fight it, avoid it, etc." But you also have people that will get the unfortunate news of their future and just give up, give in because they might think that no matter what they do they won't be able to change it.
The human mind is so amazing that it alone makes us different and makes us look at anything differently. Each person will see their future in their own way, whether they know it or not.
