mindful homework

If, Then Stories

If, Then Stories

One of my least favorite Spanish grammar lessons in high school with Señora Nula was conjugating the conditional— “Si salimos ahora, llegaremos a tiempo." At least in Romance languages, cause and effect are built into how we talk and, therefore, how we think. Of course we have this structure because it can be true— if I close my finger in the car door, it will hurt! Yet these thought patterns also often bleed over into how we conceive of the world and our place in it-- "If I do c, d will happen" or "if x happens, then I will feel y"; or "if I feel a, then b is going to happen." What prognostications! If we explore our thought patterns more deeply, we might find that subconsciously, it feels like we have been in situations where there was a causal link when maybe it was just a correlation. We are wired to learn from past experiences how to respond to the future. However, this can serve us very poorly.