Past, Present and Future.
When I meet someone new, most of the questions I ask are about his or her past. “What was your childhood like?” “What were you like in high school?” “Why did your previous relationships not last?” etc.
This strategy would make sense, if you believe the often cited saying that “my past has shaped me into the person I am today.” If this is true, then you should be able to make reasonable predictions about someone’s current self if you know their history.
But maybe you’re familiar with this popular quote, too:
“Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results”
Granted, the contexts are completely opposite (stock returns vs. a person’s character), but humor me for a minute or two.
What if, instead of posing backwards-looking questions when getting to know someone, we instead focus on how that person perceives the future. Instead of asking about their childhood, we ask them how they envision their future child’s life to be. We ask how they’d be in high school if they were walking the hallways today as opposed to X number of years ago.
What if, instead of asking any explorative questions at all, we simply observe present actions to help build our mental construct. You know they say that actions speak louder than words.
Yes, I can look back on my past and say that “because of X, Y likely happened.” But the problem is that, like most things, we are only able to make this conclusion after Y has already happened. Unfortunately or fortunately, we usually do not have the mental foresight to know what Y’s may happen at the time of X. Thus, just as it’s not good practice to assume that a company stock will rise because it did last year, it’s unscientific of us to make assumptions about a person’s future based strictly on their past.
Deciding whether or not to be friends or in a relationship with someone, IMHO, should be based primarily on the person as they are today, marginally based on the person they may be tomorrow, and very minimally on the person they were yesterday.
P.S., I also think that we need to take cliche quotes with a grain of salt.
