As a teen, the distance between the present and future was mysterious and unbreachable. Parental appeals to the future didn’t work. “Think of the future,” they said. But I couldn’t. I could picture a red bird. I could picture a lampstand. But the future? It was a phenomenological impossibility. Once the prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction in the brain have developed, it’s easier to imagine the mental states of others, or to imagine what your perspective, as a fictional Other, might be like one day. But in young teens, this capacity is still developing, so the future is a rush of action and anxiety—the future is the present moment—always unfolding as it’s being lived out, experienced in hazy and semi-articulate ways. When you are thirteen, you are not thirty-two. But when you’re thirty-two, you’re also not thirteen. And this is similarly hard to understand.
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