Why We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment

Recently I read an article “We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment” from New York Time (Link is at the end of this post). The author, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote about his reasonings as following:

1. We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society.
2. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain
3. It is increasingly clear that the mind is mainly drawn to the future, not driven by the past.

In my opinion, the professor only gave out the conclusions, but he didn’t explain the root causes of these conclusions.  My answer to ‘Why We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment’ is that its our instinct to prepare ourselves to the future unknowns. Also, our brains are mainly drawn to the future because of the excitement or the fear from future.  Suppose we can divide the time into three phases: past, present and future. Things happened in the past are memories, which can only have limited good or bad influence on our present and future.  So our brains naturely less focus on the past.  While, when things are happening at moment, our brains use to think about their outcomes, instead of the processes we are experiencing at moment, because those outcomes are unknown to us. For those optimists, they don’t live in the moment because they are looking forward to the outcomes, they are excited by that. while for those pessimistic, they do not live in the moment because of the fear, fear for the future.

How can we live in the moment? Two words: Focus and Mindfulness.  Focus and mindfulness are the mindsets we need to be trained for, because our brains most likely stay either in the past or in the future. Unfortunately, either the past or the future can solve the problems we are facing at moment. So the best we can do is: Learn from our past experience; Do the the best we can at present moment; And do not be afraid to the unknown in the future.