In Our Relation to Time

“Time fits our nature, not only because it ‘heals griefs and quarrels,’1 but because time’s perpetual flow washes away the desperate ennui2 men suffer when they feel themselves imprisoned in the present.
Just as we seek and multiply diversions as means to escape from ourselves, so, according to Pascal, ‘we anticipate the future too slow in coming … or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight…. For the present is generally painful to us…. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future…. The past and present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.'”3
 
 

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Published 2/4/19