"The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future."

"To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine - ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be."

That passage is from a new book I'm reading in between nursing management. There's only so much PPO, HMO, DRGs that I can read about before feeling the need to pull out my hair. Anyway, it's by Daniel Gilbert called Stumbling On Happiness. I quite like it so far. It's the perfect combination of truths, logic, theory, and humor. He kind of reminds me of that wise man I mentioned before. I think he'd probably like the book. I just really love that line. It continues on with:

"The greatest achievemnet of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future."

I look forward to reading the book slowly, chewing on his words, savoring the flavor. It's quite interesting. Granted, I'm only five pages in but still, I read the entire foreword and acknowledgments. That's the part I usally just skim over.

Okay, enough gushing over this book. Just ponder that quote a bit.