How far do you need to go into the future before the present will seem like the past?
When we’re struggling to get over some incident or upset, I find it can be a great help to think forward into the future—far enough into the future that present or very recent painful events seem definitely to be in the past and at a distance.
In the form of a question, it can be: “How much time will need to pass before we have moved on from this experience: A month, a year, ten years? The very act of asking the question tends in itself to move us on. Some might respond “never,” but actually there’s always a distance of time at which it’s over, even if it’s a hundred years. Then we can work back.
There’s a great line in the Tao Te Ching which sums this up…
“This too shall pass.”
If we have the courage to explore the future state, it can help us displace the present painful one.
How do you get over something?