Pardon me while I remove my dark ski mask, click off my flashlight, and pull off my gloves. I’ve just committed a robbery. For this week’s blog post I am stealing the concept and the term “The Long Now,” developed to refer to policy impacts, because I think when applied to my own personal life, it is a powerful phrase in how immediately it can change my perspective.

The term The Long Now was coined by Brian Eno after moving from England to New York.  He noticed that the here and now of Americans was much more immediate (this room, this five minutes), then what he was used to in England.  Mr. Eno became a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, based in San Francisco.  The aim of the Foundation is to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and to promote “slower/better” thinking.  Members acknowledge the increasingly short attention span of our culture driven by the acceleration of technology, the short horizon of current market driven economics, the election cycle perspective of current politics, and the distractions of personal multi-tasking. According to the website, the Foundation sponsors speakers and debates and encourages dialog in hopes to “creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”.  The guidelines of Long Now thinking involve promoting responsibility and rewarding patience.

When I first heard the term (thanks Jennifer), The Long Now, I immediately loved it.  It resonated with me on many levels, without really knowing the Foundation’s goals and motivation (10,000 years!).  Just by saying it, the phrase has a magical way of pulling me out of the current moment by extending that moment into the future.  It is a simply elegant way of thinking about the future consequences of my current behavior by emphasizing the link between the two.  It reminds me of the small steps, little choices, that will add up to where I will be someday.  When I think about today’s choices in terms of my Long Now, I can picture myself in the future having been the beneficiary or the victim of an incremental set of choices and events.  It simply reminds me that, in time, the future will be the current now.  Now that is motivating for me to help keep me on track with my goals –  I can have this indulgence now, or think of my ultimate goal in my Long Now.

The Long Now also offers me a soothing thought:  whatever I am going through now, this “now” is not how it will always be.  I may worry about some of my child’s decisions, for example, but if I think in the Long Now, I can have the confidence of knowing she will mature and grow, and be just fine in the long now.

I also love that by engaging in Long Now thinking I am encouraged into a mature and wise perspective that promotes ways of thinking and acting that I know is good for me and is associated with success and happiness.  I am encouraged to delay immediate gratification and think of my responsibility to my children and my children’s children, offering a sense of connection and generativity.  Long Now thinking lends itself to our sense of being an agent in determining our collective future. If I think in the now, I plant flowers.  If I think in the Long Now, I also plant trees.

So pardon my theft of this lofty 10,000 year perspective and slipping it into my own back pocket.  But as an idea, it feels extremely valuable, and as a practice, it feels priceless!

Note:  You can visit the Long Now library and bar, called the Interval, in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.  Chat with others and contemplate time with the 10,000 year clock.