Out of the blue, I took a good look of myself in a shop window. And old man with sharp eyes and bushy eyebrows stared back at me. Whence my visions of the future? And whence my certainty of those visions? Could I be suffering from a delusion of some kind? Could it be typical of my gender and age? Is there a name for it in psychology or psychiatry? As soon as I returned to my beloved’s apartment, I went to my laptop, and I searched the World Wide Web. “The prophet syndrome” was the phrase I was interested in. The term is there, all right, but it is associated with religion, and especially with Christianity. The term “false prophet” goes with it. Much of what I found was gibberish. At any rate, I was quite pleased with my failed search. But the next thing that came to my mind was that the prophet syndrome could indeed be associated with gender and age. In our tribal past, the elders occasionally came up with visions of the future, I am quite sure. These visions had to be sturdy to be useful to the tribe. Some elders were better at it than others, whence the notion of true and false prophets. Be that as it may, I am pretty sure I am onto something. Something wonderful, too. The prophet syndrome is at work, no doubt.

Addendum (October 26, 2016)

This particular phrase comes to my mind every now and then, but I am none the wiser almost exactly two years later. I just searched the World Wide Web once again, but I found nothing of any interest. Interestingly, I did not find this piece of mine, either. Even though it was posted so long ago, it appears to be beyond Google’s reach. Is it suppressed for some reason? If so, who would suppress it and why? Be that as it may, my ruminations about tribal elders remain close to my heart. In other words, they strike me as plausible still. Past a certain age, the best the elders can come up with are visions of the future. Good or bad, they cannot but be valuable to the entire tribe. Which goes a long way toward explaining why the elders remain alive well past the time when they are still capable of taking care of themselves. The elders would thus do their best to prove their worth whenever an opportunity arises. Any vision would do in this context. Whence the prophet syndrome, an atavism that must have very deep roots. Quite plausible, indeed.