Instructions

[Blorg]

1. Stand up. (Yes, you have to, or else it won't work.)
2. Imagine a continuum from past to future.
3. With your hands, indicate where the past, present, and future "are," according to your visualization of this continuum, in relation to yourself.

Please don't read other people's posts in this thread till you've followed the instructions, if you plan to.



edit: and post how you visualized it. Then I'll tell you what your visualization means about you.

edit: it won't mean anything bad.

[Perdix]

Well... what are we supposed to post?

I didn't use my hands to indicate where past present and future were. I saw myself standing on straight walkway, with the future stretching out in front of me, and the past behind me.

EDIT: What if an honest interpretation is actually bad? I know you said you would refrain, but what if?

[Robcore]

My response:

Spoiler: spoiler

Past begins outside of the periphery to the left, but my Past at my left shoulder, present at my left ear, and my future at my right shoulder(with future-general extending into the right periphery)...

[OrionzRevenge]

I visualize A time-line in a traditional graphic illustration
Past to the left
present straight ahead
future to the right

[Madrigal]

Past: Heart
Present: Eyes
Future: Head

[Vison]

I stood around confused for a couple moments. Then I imagined a bubble around me that slowly got more intense/dense until it collapsed in upon itself, scattering me in particulate form across all planes.

[BarIII]

My first thought was that this is about MY past, present and future. Sitting down I pictured myself in the center (shouldn't actual age be used in the analysis?) with my youth to my left and my future to my right. I briefly considered maybe putting myself further toward the dead end, because with so many relatives I've known being elderly or dead that's how it feels sometimes, but I mainly thought about my age.

Oh, then I stood up but I was still in the center.

[Hephaestus]

The past is what is directly in front of me. My past is the center of my vision, the part with the greatest detail. If I point directly ahead of me, gazing past my fingertip--that's my memory.

The present is found by taking my index fingers and placing them on either side of my head while staring straight ahead. Then, I draw my fingers back toward the rear of my head, stopping when I can no longer sense them with my peripheral vision. The present is just outside of my ability to perceive. I can almost glimpse it with the corner of my eye.

The future is everything behind me that I can't see.


Edit: For clarification, in this scenario, my line of vision is my own past. As you move to the periphery of my vision, you are seeing the people who have shared that past with me. Then, my peripheral vision is the past I didn't experience. I can only view it fuzzily by directing my attention to it, but it's always less perfect than my own past, as I can never actually look directly at it.

[msg_v2]

It's a line slightly above my eyes that moves from left to right. The color is red for some reason. The edges are sharp.

[stigmatica]

1. Stand up. (Yes, you have to, or else it won't work.)
2. Imagine a continuum from past to future.
3. With your hands, indicate where the past, present, and future "are," according to your visualization of this continuum, in relation to yourself.

Ok, I read step 1, but didn't stand up. I continued to read the rest of your post. I then started pondering how one's native language affects what directions and metaphors one associates with the movement of time, which reminded me of the Australian aboriginals advanced awareness of cardinal directions due to a lack of awareness/use of relative directions. Then, I started pondering a show I once saw in which they placed compass belts with a vibrating awareness of North on people and had them practice for a time, and eventually they were able to navigate fairly well blindfolded 2nd nature... which then got me wondering what it would be like to have this sort of sense built into our minds, like geese.... This went on for a while and then I came back to your post.

I considered that I had already ruined the experiment by reading all of it before standing up, thus predisposing myself to a visualization of past/present/future before having stood therefore destroying forever the knowledge of what I'd have truly come up with had I stood first. I stood anyway, and for a second I looked at a road going off (forward being the future, etc.. ) but then started trying to become like those of other languages... imagining what it would be like to visualize it backwards to forwards, left to right, right to left... pondering my 3d (front/back) and 2d (left/right) predisposition towards visualizing time. Then I thought of it in more emotional terms. The past was my Grandmas house in New Mexico, and I fondly remembered her/it. Military hardships, the birth of my children, etc... moving to the present... which I found difficult to visualize imaginatively because I'm surrounded by it in reality. The present just "is". Thinking of the future, the first thing that came to mind was death. I imagined myself quite old. Hopefully that was a foretelling.

THEN I thought how silly it was I was just standing there thinking, and considered whether to post something simple and not quite true, or TMI it like this. I said WTH and did it.

Edit: Suffice it to say, I totally forgot my hands.
Edit 2: Fails to follow instructions. Totally failed the "Follow instructions.. write your name and turn it in ignoring the rest of this quiz" test in school.