Martin E. P. Seligman has been called the father of positive psychology. I rediscovered his teachings after a rabbit hole search on Google … we’ve all been there! He founded the Center for Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The center’s researchers and educators—including Dr. Karen Reivich, the director of the center’s training programs—have crafted an extensive project devoted to increasing wellbeing in people of all ages. In an article written some time ago based on their findings, the authors suggested that homo sapiens (wise humans) would be better termed homo prospectus (future-focused humans). The article maintains that our ability to contemplate our future is what differentiates and, in fact, defines us as a species. Our brains are wired to imagine the future. The image we create can be bleak or it can be optimistic depending on our own personal framing.
This concept is of particular interest when we attempt to understand our tradition’s ancient texts. While we look at them as products of history—and therefore of the past—the authors of these books saw them as projections into the future. Though set in the author’s past, the messages to the characters in the story and the readers of it are written for a time beyond their present: “When you get to the land … this is what you shall do … when you go to war … when you acquire a slave … when you marry … you shall teach your children …” For the Israelites wandering in the desert, all the commands were anticipating a future lifestyle in a promised land. The fulfillment of their lives lay ahead of them.
Seligman’s article goes on to say that “prospection enables us to become wise not just from our own experiences but also by learning from others.” It seems that was the insight of our ancestors. By sharing a history that anticipated a different future from that of enslavement and wandering, they sought to create a mindset that says: To be an Israelite/Jew is to anticipate the future and to build the foundation that will make it possible for it to be lived by us and those that come after. The modern psychologists assert that this type of forward thinking internalizes hope and optimism. The more we focus on a future of possibility and actually work to make that imagined future real, the more likely we are to experience fulfillment in our own lives. Optimism isn’t a dreamlike belief in an impossible future; it’s a deep-set belief that the future we imagine can be possible.
—Rabbi Ron Stern