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Not living in the here and now?

animenagai

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Aug 22, 2008
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1,569
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NeFi
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4w3
this is very interesting. not only the differences between N and S but the different brands of 'not being here and now'. it seems that a lot of people here are very directly future prone in their thinking. 'what to do next' is the question. i'm not sure i'm that future prone but i'm definitely 'away with the fairies'.

my thoughts tend to be about concepts, themes, hidden messages more than anything. if a watch a film, i'll be thinking about themes such as freedom. if i'm playing football with my friends, i'll thinking about what nfl teams do, the X's and O's, what the best strategy is etc. rather than just run and catch or whatever. if i'm walking down the street, i'm often thinking about fantasies, philosophy, the almost magical appearance of a certain view etc. to me my N takes me towards the conceptual side of N rather than the future side. most the time it's nothing about what i'll do either, i like dwelling in ideas, concepts for the sake of it. concepts energize me naturally so just because i came up with some amazing philosophical question, i'm not necessarily thinking "i'll publish this when i do my masters". could be an Ne thing. most of the replies here seem to be from IN's.
 

placebo

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May 11, 2008
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492
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INFP
Probably one of my biggest traits/problems is being inactive because I'm too busy thinking about things.
 

Anja

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May 2, 2008
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2,967
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INFP
You put words in my mouth, anime.

Someone once told me "Plan plans, not outcomes." That's been perfect for me and keeps me good and flexible while still prepared.

Then I can go back to watching an ant trying to carry a fly across the sidewalk and thinkng about the global significance of the mighty act.
 
B

beyondaurora

Guest
For me, it's as though there is a thin, semi-opaque, white mist or veil in front of me - like a screen - that separates the colors behind it from being viewed vividly. I want to experience the present, but it has to be filtered through this veil first, so I usually 'experience' the present more fully after it has passed.

It's never crossed my mind that this way of viewing life is future-oriented, though. :thinking:
 

bluebell

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Joined
Apr 30, 2007
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1,485
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INTP
It's sometimes frustrating when I go out jogging or biking on a beautiful day in order to enjoy the scenery and the weather and then, while stepping inside again, I realize that I haven't seen anything and I have just been totally lost in my thoughts. :doh:

I struggle with that too. I have to concentrate really hard to notice what's going on around me. And even then, I have an internal observer providing commentary/analysis. Sometimes taking a camera with me helps make me focus on the scenery around me.

I'm rarely in the present. The closest I get is a blur slightly before or slightly after the present moment, but I'm often looking back in to the past, either what happened during the day or the deeper past. I do a bit of future planning but it's more contingency planning rather than life goals. Most of the time, though, I'm inside my mental model of the world which sometimes feels more than the real world.
 

wolfy

awsm
Joined
Jun 30, 2008
Messages
12,251
my thoughts tend to be about concepts, themes, hidden messages more than anything. if a watch a film, i'll be thinking about themes such as freedom...

That's really interesting. When I watch a film I always experience it through my body. My physical reactions.
A fight movie if it's a good one can make me almost shake with adrenaline.
Really abstract movies like um... Vanilla Sky I'll feel the confusion of the situation etc...
I know there is some biological basis for that happening. I can't remember where I read it though...
 

Cimarron

IRL is not real
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Aug 21, 2008
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3,417
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ISTJ
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5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
It's sometimes frustrating when I go out jogging or biking on a beautiful day in order to enjoy the scenery and the weather and then, while stepping inside again, I realize that I haven't seen anything and I have just been totally lost in my thoughts.
See, the same thing happens to me all the time, but I'm lost in events that have been happening, events that have happened, things that I've heard about recently, maybe about where that would lead.

Maybe it's like the SPs' "living in the here and now," except all that stuff that you physically experience isn't acted upon at the moment. It's not ignored, but there's no immediate reaction to it, either. So it gets held in the head.

Generalizing, of course, and a little bit of guessing.
 

01011010

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Jun 22, 2008
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3,916
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INxJ
For me it's like living in two worlds at once. My body does stuff in one world, while my mind thinks about things in the other (or sometimes my mind jumps from one world to the other and back). For example the other day a bunch of us actuaries were in a meeting discussing how to give thorough answers to test questions. All of these were technical insurance questions. Meanwhile my mind is thinking "What if a person had Tourette's syndrome, but it only affected them while they write?" Then I imagined myself answering the test questions while I had Tourette's of the hand, interspersing technical jargon with uncontrollable swearing. I tried my hardest not to sit there laughing to myself, because we were on conference call with about 30-40 people. After the meeting several people were commenting how boring the meeting was, while I was thinking how much I enjoyed myself. :)

Aha. Nice.
 
G

garbage

Guest
It's kind of like you're on autopilot in the present moment, thinking instead about the future.

Ever daydreamed? It's a lot like that for me.
 

Domino

ENFJ In Chains
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Nov 5, 2007
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sx/so
It's exactly like being lost in a daydream, 24/7.
 

Bamboo

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Jan 28, 2009
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XXFP
I don't get it. Where is this non-here and now?

For example, I can imagine something that isn't here and now. Like, lets say, a pineapple. I'm thinking about this pineapple and I can 'feel' the texture and see the color and even 'taste' it although I'm really just projecting it in my head and there aren't any pineapples around me. If I'm not imagining something, then all that's left is the texture of the keyboard and the chair I'm sitting on and these words being typed on the screen.

I guess what I'm asking is what do you see (feel, hear, etc.) when you "look out?" The future?!? Where else could you be besides here and now? Or do most people not spend time "looking out"?

Confused.
 

Costrin

rawr
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Nov 1, 2008
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5w4
I guess what I'm asking is what do you see (feel, hear, etc.) when you "look out?" The future?!?

Um well... yes.

We're imagining future scenarios and playing them out in our head. Or scenarios not connected in any way to a specific time.
 

Bamboo

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Um well... yes.

We're imagining future scenarios and playing them out in our head. Or scenarios not connected in any way to a specific time.


Ok so I mentioned the pineapple above (I like using weird examples). I can imagine the pineapple in my head. To me "out there' is a different space than the space where I would see (or feel etc) the pineapple. When you "look out", do you see it in the same space as you see the pineapple? That doesn't seem to make sense in my mind.
 

Costrin

rawr
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Ok so I mentioned the pineapple above (I like using weird examples). I can imagine the pineapple in my head. To me "out there' is a different space than the space where I would see (or feel etc) the pineapple. When you "look out", do you see it in the same space as you see the pineapple? That doesn't seem to make sense in my mind.

Well, I'm probably not imagining a pineapple at all. If I am, I'm probably imagining all the things I could do with a pineapple, and where pineapples come from, the evolution of pineapples, how pineapples affected past societies. What would happen if all pineapples suddenly disappeared, or what would happen if every orange tree suddenly starting growing pineapples instead, what a society of pineapple-fueled cars would look like. Yeah, I don't think I'm really explaining this well....

Anyway, that's my (Ne-centric) approach.

So I'm not really imagining a pineapple in my hands. I'm imagining parallel universes with a different set of starting variables.
 
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Domino

ENFJ In Chains
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I don't get it. Where is this non-here and now?

For example, I can imagine something that isn't here and now. Like, lets say, a pineapple. I'm thinking about this pineapple and I can 'feel' the texture and see the color and even 'taste' it although I'm really just projecting it in my head and there aren't any pineapples around me. If I'm not imagining something, then all that's left is the texture of the keyboard and the chair I'm sitting on and these words being typed on the screen.

I guess what I'm asking is what do you see (feel, hear, etc.) when you "look out?" The future?!? Where else could you be besides here and now? Or do most people not spend time "looking out"?

Confused.

The pineapple is merely scenting my altered reality. I can be touching it, smelling it, tasting it, and still be only 40% present. I can never feel reality at 100%, even when something awful/wonderful is happening. That's the state of my intuition. It's something of a curse. I do what I can to apply my Se and make the moment real, but ultimately, I'm out of body, almost as if remotely viewing what's happening.

I recall sitting in my ESFP bff's tiny kitchen, frying up pork chops and glazed apples, and listening to the radio in the window playing country music. We were chatting and laughing, and the evening was so pleasant and warm, and the grasshoppers were raising a low racket outside. I was sitting at the tiny kitchenette listening to Shorty and Jaye talk about something, standing over the chops on the stove, smelling the sting of pepper in the air, and STILL feeling as if we were in a dream. I was slipping back and forth between the past and future, like a liquid sloshing.

It's impossible for me to be "present" without the past and future altering the picture, the smell, the color, the tenor, etc.
 

heart

heart on fire
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May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
Ok so I mentioned the pineapple above (I like using weird examples). I can imagine the pineapple in my head. To me "out there' is a different space than the space where I would see (or feel etc) the pineapple. When you "look out", do you see it in the same space as you see the pineapple? That doesn't seem to make sense in my mind.

I don't tend to see the pineapple, many times even if I am eating it, I am imagining that it is another person eating it, I taste it through layers of removal. I might have imagined eating pineapples all the day before and now I have a pineapple and I say to myself "okay now you're really getting to eat pineapple, enjoy it, experience it!" yet in my mind, I am now eating mangoes.
 
S

Sniffles

Guest
My Ni and Se are constantly battling with each other. So it means that on one hand, I can focus deeply into the future, yet in my day-to-day affairs I can't even plan for next week often(not to mention my job operates on a day-to-day basis). *sigh*
 

Bamboo

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The pineapple is merely scenting my altered reality. I can be touching it, smelling it, tasting it, and still be only 40% present. I can never feel reality at 100%, even when something awful/wonderful is happening.*3 That's the state of my intuition. It's something of a curse. I do what I can to apply my Se and make the moment real, but ultimately, I'm out of body, almost as if remotely viewing what's happening*1.

I recall sitting in my ESFP bff's tiny kitchen, frying up pork chops and glazed apples, and listening to the radio in the window playing country music. We were chatting and laughing, and the evening was so pleasant and warm, and the grasshoppers were raising a low racket outside. I was sitting at the tiny kitchenette listening to Shorty and Jaye talk about something, standing over the chops on the stove, smelling the sting of pepper in the air, and STILL feeling as if we were in a dream. I was slipping back and forth between the past and future, like a liquid sloshing.*2

It's impossible for me to be "present" without the past and future altering the picture, the smell, the color, the tenor, etc.*3

That's hard to understand, but I think I do something similar to bolded *1 above. Sometimes I relate to my body as "a transport/communication/manipulation device" and I do something I call "letting the machine run." Basically, I've found that my body is remarkably well programmed for a variety of tasks, that if I were to try to consciously control, I would screw up, like catching a thrown object. I just think, "catch" (not actually verbalized) and let go. Eyes start tracking, feet move, arm goes up and then something is in my hand.

But I'm still there while I do it.

*2 brings up the question, what do your dreams feel like? Sounds really uncertain.

*3 - sorry, but that sounds like it must be really confusing. Also, how the heck do you drive a car? :shock: :newwink:

Good stuff to know. Still don't get it, but subjective experience is like that.

PS sounds like a nice evening. Seems like you remembered it ok.
 
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Bamboo

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So I'm not really imagining a pineapple in my hands. I'm imagining parallel universes with a different set of starting variables.

That actually makes sense. Also, I never noticed this emoticon and feel that it is appropriate: :nerd:

Ti for life. Hoorah.
 

Quinlan

Intriguing....
Joined
Apr 6, 2008
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ISFP
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9w1
The very thought of being in a 24/7 daydream makes me dizzy.
 
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