The topic today is injuries and the end-of-history effect.
So, I get a lot of people who call me to talk about their injuries. I wrote about my injury multiple times in an open way and when I did, I was trying to explain how I got to where I am and the ideas that I have. What was unexpected is that people reached out to me and asked for advice about what to do regarding their own injuries. You see, when somebody gets injured, the loss is very clear. There was one guy, for example, who used to be a cartoonist. He lost much of the use of his hands. He could never be a cartoonist again. What he lost was very clear. Where he could find happiness and what he could gain, was less clear.
I don’t try to minimize tragedy, but among the things I tell people (and I’m not going to give you the full approach and the full speech) is about the end-of-history effect. By the way, please do the following exercise with me.
I ask them, “How much do you think you’re going to change in the next ten years?” And people generally say something along the lines of “Not that much. I’ve arrived.” And then I ask, “In the last 10 years, how much did you change?” People usually say they changed a lot. If you’ve had an injury, it’s extra. But outside of an injury, people say a lot. And the moment they answer, they realize that something is inconsistent. Why is that momentthat I’m asking a transition between changing a lot and not changing that much? Then we discuss why people think they’ve changed a lot in the last 10 years and won’t change a lot in the future?
The answer is that when we look back, we see lots of change. But when we think about change, we don’t see exactly where it would come from. A lot of change comes from all kinds of small things: Somebody we met, a job that we took, a course that we tried, a romantic partner we met. When we say, “In the next 10 years, how many new wonderful people will I meet?” We don’t know. We have no idea. We can’t even imagine. But when we look back, we say, “Oh! I met that person. He introduced me to somebody else. Here is what happened . . .”
So, we have this general idea that we think we’ve arrived, and we underestimate how much we’ll change. This, by the way, is also very important for couples. Because if you think that as a couple, you’re stuck, you’re wrong. You’ll both change. The question is, will you change in the same direction or a different direction? But for people with disabilities, it’s extra important because if you’ve just had an injury and you’re just out of it, you’re underestimating the change, then you don’t have the same motivation to look and find and search. But to understand that the next chapter could have just as much change as any other chapter in a ten-year period gives lots of motivation.
And that’s the end-of-history effect and why it’s extra important for people with disabilities (also for couples).
So, to continuous change and to our understanding that we’re going to keep on changing.
