Plan for the past, learn from the future

Is the way we, as humans, view time the best way? Now, now, I know this sounds pretty dumb and confusing at first, like what does it even mean to “view time” in a certain way, and it's completely fair to be suspicious. But you should acknowledge that as a human, you’re biased, you’ve only seen time progress linearly. 

Time that doesn't progress linearly is completely unintuitive to us and difficult to wrap our heads around, but it is central to the 2016 movie Arrival. TL;DR (I highly recommend watching this movie in full, though) heptapods arrive on Earth, and experience time non-linearly, perceiving all events at once, challenging human intuitions of cause and effect (and explores the philosophical view of eternalism). Louise, a linguistics expert, works to decode their language and, by doing so, unlocks the ability to understand time the way heptapods do (suggesting perception is shaped by language).

Initially, the power to see the future might seem like an overpowered ability, but it reveals itself to be more imprisoning than empowering. Louise foresees her daughter's early death due to illness, before the daughter is even born. If you knew your future joy would end in grief, would you still choose it? Well, Louise still decided to have a child. Her acceptance implies that foreknowledge doesn’t cheapen experience. But she still has to spend every moment with her daughter, aware that she doesn't have much time. 

Perhaps it's true that knowledge of demise led Louise to appreciate each moment more; foresight made her cherish the present. But it comes with the cost: bottled-up emotional trauma every time she sees her daughter. So I guess we are lucky that we don't have to deal with the grievances of the future along with the traumas from the past. Maybe we should just cherish the present more in general, without requiring knowledge of future despair to help motivate us.