During my work life and career, I have had to deal with being (or feeling) ahead of the curve by about ten to twenty years. The things I like to think about – circular time versus linear time, matter and anti-matter, quantum mechanics or quantum physics, an equation to designate the development of time, new treatment protocols for cancer or behavioral health or HIV/AIDS, development of biofuels as a substantial source of our energy supply – all tend to surface at least ten years before the topic reaches the mainstream. For example, I wrote three grants to the USDA to use farm and animal waste for energy back in 1999/2000. (I did not get the grants.) Biofuels did not hit it big until about 2010 (this is a guesstimate) and in 2020 are still not in widespread use as a way to process farm waste and generate energy.
In some respects I have gotten used to the ten year gap and do not have expectations that my thoughts and insights will be useful to society. I also have recognized that throughout the course of history many people with certain thoughts are often not recognized during their lifetimes. Knowing this helps me not to get too frustrated when my inroads go nowhere. And then again, perhaps nowhere is where these thoughts are intended to go.
This sense of “being ahead of the curve” may relate back to the imaginary thoughts of that six-year-old child within. Just as with any young child, my younger child within believes that all things are possible including things that logic and reason cannot readily address. That younger child within for example believes she may have developed an equation to characterize the passage of time. As I have no training in that area of science or even remotely connected to that area of science, any work I might have achieved in this regard must be due to the imagination projected forward onto the page by that younger child within. Regardless, science is needed to fact check any or all of these musings.
This sense of “being ahead of the curve” most likely requires a scientific approach to validate whether any of my early perceptions are valuable or truthful. As mentioned before, I consider this younger child within to be almost autistic. (My therapist has asked me to consider whether I feel I am on the spectrum.) Therefore is it possible that certain impressions of that child within may lead to the ability to work out complex problems without prior training just as an autistic person can perform complex mathematic calculations without any training in higher math?
Also, I do not have much perceived anxiety in regard to these perceptions. They are what they are and nothing further. I consider them to be perhaps inspired by the Divine but in need of fact-checking by good science in order to move forward. Until then they are just thoughts.
I am curious, do other people ever feel like they are ahead of the curve?
Mental Health is Health 