Why? It's a small act that says "I expect to be around and having enough leisure and interest in life a few months from now to be checking out and reading books from a library". It's an act of faith in the meaningfulness of the future.
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Planning a vacation is similar. For women, buying a dress for the next season seems to do the same trick. Starting a hobby project that you know will take months or years to complete, starting to learn a musical instrument.
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Much more than figuring out big retirement portfolio things or planning to buy a house etc, it is these small investments in the future that matter for mental health. The big, necessary ones in fact can turn into oppressive burdens. I take zero joy in retirement investing for eg
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Another thing I did recently was buy a bunch of succulents. I have to figure out and learn how to take care of them, repot them, etc. Says a lot btw that succulents are rising in popularity. They are about the hardiest little investments you can make in the future.
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My mother-in-law, an avid gardener, told me that they're nearly impossible to kill. I hope she's right. I'm not exactly great at gardening.
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I wish we as a species were better at doing this sort of thing at every scale. We seem to suck at it above individual/family scale. Community groups for example, seem only capable of hedonistic partying or bureaucratic parades and things.
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Your future is only as real as the little things you plant in it to look forward to, creating a gentle tug of anticipation to keep your inner clock ticking. If all you do everyday is deal with exhausting crap of daily life and responsible long-term crap, life is not worth it.
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"Living in the moment" is, neurologically speaking, bullshit. We're not creatures of the transient present. We have dopamine-driven striatum allowing us to live in stories rather than impressionistic scenes. That's a feature, not a bug. One meant to be used.
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I don't know if that's true, though. No one has a longer want list than someone who's contemplating suicide.
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A want list is subtly different from a seed list. Seeding the future is taking small steps to actually make it happen. See a path, take a step.

