Hard-Wired to Look Ahead

Allow me a sentimental follow-up to the previous post. I was drawn to the Augustine quote because he put his finger on something I think many of us know intuitively. Experiences of joy in this life are always tainted by the fact that we know they will not last and the fact that we long for something more permanent is, in my estimation, a significant clue as to the purpose of why we’re here.

I learn many lessons from my kids but of all the lessons I have learned in my three short years of parenthood this one stands out: children have a fundamentally eschatological outlook on life. They seem to be hard-wired to look ahead, to look forward to an ideal future. Part of this may be the simple frustrations and limitations of childhood (’if I was bigger I could…’) but I wonder if they aren’t intuitively aware of realities that we easily forget.

Earlier this summer we celebrated a climactic moment as a family - we celebrated Julie’s third birthday. This was the culmination of six months of eager anticipation, of daily interrogations regarding just when the big day would arrive. The interesting thing to me was that in the months leading up to the party, almost every joy that Julie experienced needed to be a part of her birthday party as well. If she met a new friend she would wonder if this person could come to her party. If she got a new shirt she asked if she could wear it at her party. If she had fun with a new activity we would have to do it at her party. If she saw an interesting object of nearly any variety, she wanted to have that object at her party. It was almost as if this day would be the culmination of every positive experience she had had throughout the year. If something good happened, it stood to reason that it should be a part of her birthday party.

So the birthday party has come and gone (there’s always next year) but that hasn’t stopped the dreaming. Many positive experiences are now projected onto a future time ‘when I’m bigger’ and this provides comfort for the fact that she can’t do whatever she wants right now. There’s also the ‘maybe we can do that again sometime’ line that comes up literally every time she enjoys herself. Like most kids, she is delightfully able to ‘live in the moment’ yet there seems to be this future orientation present as well.

I guess what I’m observing is that my daughter looks ahead, not just in the restless way that children want to grow up, but in a way where she seems to recognize that joy is supposed to be something that lasts more than just a couple of hours. This seems to produce a vision of the future that makes the present more understandable and the inevitable pain of bedtime at the end of a fun evening more tolerable.

I think this is the way we function as human beings. We need a vision of the end to help us make sense of the present. Is this wishful thinking or a sign meant to point to something beyond us?