“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” the Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert said in a 2014 TED talk called “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” He described research
- 7 years ago
“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” the Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert said in a 2014 TED talk called “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” He described research
that he and his colleagues had done in 2013: Study subjects (ranging from 18 to 68 years old) reported changing much more over a decade than they expected to.
When I told Neal about this years later, he said, “Maybe you found it ridiculous because you’d already done it.”
It’s true that from ages 16 to 19 I had a lot of boyfriends.
That one fling of a bowl probably bought us another five years of marriage.
In doing research, I listened to one person after another claim
that the street was a shadow of its former self, that all the good businesses had closed and all the good people had left.
On the rare occasions when we discussed our future, he said he wasn’t ready to settle down
because one day, he claimed, he would probably need to “sow” his “wild oats” — a saying I found tacky and a concept I found ridiculous.
When we met in our 20s, Neal wasn’t a man who would delight in lawn care, and I wasn’t a woman who would find such a man appealing.
And what is the key to caring less about change as a marriage evolves — things
like how much sex we’re having and whether or not it’s the best sex possible?
that he and his colleagues had done in 2013: Study subjects (ranging from 18 to 68 years old) reported changing much more over a decade than they expected to.
When I told Neal about this years later, he said, “Maybe you found it ridiculous because you’d already done it.”
It’s true that from ages 16 to 19 I had a lot of boyfriends.
That one fling of a bowl probably bought us another five years of marriage.
In doing research, I listened to one person after another claim
that the street was a shadow of its former self, that all the good businesses had closed and all the good people had left.
On the rare occasions when we discussed our future, he said he wasn’t ready to settle down
because one day, he claimed, he would probably need to “sow” his “wild oats” — a saying I found tacky and a concept I found ridiculous.
When we met in our 20s, Neal wasn’t a man who would delight in lawn care, and I wasn’t a woman who would find such a man appealing.
And what is the key to caring less about change as a marriage evolves — things
like how much sex we’re having and whether or not it’s the best sex possible?