Remembering Yesterday, Chasing Tomorrow

In Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay “The Vanity of Existence,” there is a haunting passage about the human experience that transcends generations. It has not only stood the test of time but is perhaps even more relevant today than when he wrote it in 1851.

He wrote:

"We are always living in expectation of better things, while at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed was just their life-that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!"

-Arthur Schopenhauer

"We are always living in expectation of better things.... we often repent and long to have the past back again."

Is this true for us? We have become so obsessed with the future with making tomorrow better that we forget today. Then, when we finally get there, we begin revisiting the past: the tragedies, the beautiful moments, and the experiences we failed to notice while we were living them.

Do we ignore the smaller joys at the present for the possibility of something bigger? Do we mistreat ourselves today for the promise of a better tomorrow?

"We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal..."

Are we treating the present moment passively, as merely a temporary stepping stones towards our future goals?

"Most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim..."

We often realize this only in the future, when we look back at the past with nostalgia. Because we view the present as “something to be put up with,” we fail to actually live it. This is the illusion of living ad interim.

"They will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed was just their life-that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived."

When we reach the end of our time and look back, we then experience a deadly realization. We discover that life was never a race or a destination to be reached. It was the collection of ordinary, daily moments: the small actions and minor joys that we completely ignored and allowed to slip by unenjoyed.

"...hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death."

Are we currently hoping of something or someone in the future that we are ignoring the present moment.?

Hope, in this case, is nothing more than blind optimism. It is not a virtue; it is an evolutionary trick driven by irrational will to live. This "hope" keeps us constantly striving and suffering in the present for tomorrow that never delivers true satisfaction.

Today, we have gone a step further: we have hyper-optimized this way of living. We do not simply “put up with” the present; we aggressively sacrifice it. We trade sleep, mental health, and relationships for future career milestones or financial targets.

In our modern era, I think the technology has amplified this trap exponentially. We sit at a beautiful concert, watch a sunset, or stand on a mountain peak, and view it through the phone screen to record it for a future. What a paradox. We save the present moment so that we can look back at it later, completely refusing to inhabit it right now. Human nature is simply so absurd.

I think this explains the modern human condition in so many ways. The belief that reaching a goal will bring lasting happiness is a psychological trap; one that causes us to defer our present lives to an imaginary future.

Do what you are doing-whether cutting apples, running, washing dishes, writing, caring of people, or inventing something.

Be where you are.

Be present...

It is all there is...