Can your brain solve this problem?

Over the weekend, I went to a funeral where old friends and former classmates gathered. I hadn't seen some folks since high school. Others, I'd seen sometime back and were easy to recognize. But what stood out more was the way everyone fell into reminiscing about the "good old days," recounting old stories in such great detail the gloom of the moment vanished as those joys of the past came to life with explosive laughter.

Driving home, it struck me that so many people I know lament the dark and dank of "today" and hail yesteryear as if it were nothing short of brilliant, radiant, and full of rainbows. It's like saying today we're all floating in a toilet and yesterday we were all relaxing in a jacuzzi.

So today, I was conversing with another friend and wondered why we look to the past with such longing to return there. Has anyone figured this out yet? Has it been studied even? I don't know, but my friend quoted an ancient Roman poet by the name of Martial who said, "The present joys of life we doubly taste by looking back with pleasure on the past."

Hearing that, I figured, well, okay, it's as old as the hills. Generation after generation, grownups look backward and find a deeper comfort in what was. But, on the other hand, younger folks find a greater comfort in imagining the better future that awaits them. In other words, nobody today seems to enjoy the moment they're in, and that's why everyone's so stuck in their miseries and pointing hateful fingers at everyone else. Good god, who's going to break the mold once and for all?

How can we stop a president from warring with other nations if we can't stop our petty selves from warring with our petty neighbors? It all comes down to bloated egos and trivialities, does it not? It's always been this way, but I'm wondering what y'all think. Is limiting our joy to either living in the past or in the future coded into our DNA, and if so, is there some way out of it? Maybe I should consult artificial intelligence since it seems to think it's more brilliant than any human alive.

But before I do that, do any of you good people out there have an answer for me? Do any of you even live fully in the present? They say it's good to challenge our brains. Maybe we can be the first among many to solve the issue right here and now.