Everyone thinks about the future in their own way. Some people like to plan, analyse and develop strategies, others visualise and imagine the future, still others think very little about it. It's relatively easy to tell when you ask someone: Hey, what are your plans for next week or this month or the next 2 months? Or how do you see yourself evolving in your profession a year from now.

We humans are endowed with this amazing ability to imagine. We hold past experiences in memories that we can recall at will. These memories affect our character and determine our desires, likes and dislikes. We tend to optimise toward pleasure and stay away from pain. Some experiences leave deeper marks on the mind than others. Childhood trauma can trigger anxiety into adulthood and even be passed on to next generations. In this case a person's future is determined more by his past experiences than by his ability to imagine or to strategise.

And when I speak of the future, I mean an event localised within a certain reality (context) and that has not yet occurred. It is something we do compulsively, with eyes open or closed, we allow a stream of images to form in our mind, an emotion to enliven our being, or a sentence, a monologue to inspire a certain action or attitude. This is the default modus operandi of the human mind, but not the only one.