溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Do We Never Live in the Present, but Only in Past and Future?
Chewing over the past and worrying the future in advance, do we miss the now — the only time that exists?
We never keep to the present time.
Pascal's diagnosis that "we never live in the present" lights the dark underside of the old wisdom to dwell in the now. The Stoics Aurelius and Seneca urged living the present because they knew humans do not. The Buddha too taught not to chase the gone nor long for the not-yet — so the wisdom of East and West diagnosed the same human ailment. Pascal linked this ailment to a fundamental human condition, "diversion" (divertissement): unable to bear the emptiness of the now, we flee ceaselessly elsewhere. Why we cannot keep to the now returns even today, in an age that speaks of mindfulness.
In an age surrounded by things that ceaselessly pull attention elsewhere, Pascal's question — why we cannot keep to the now — is sharper than ever.
Pascal marks a strange habit of the human mind.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Pascal marks a strange habit of the human mind. Regretting and clutching the past, or worrying the future in advance, we rarely keep to the present — the only time we actually have. When we should live the now, our mind is always elsewhere. As a result we never learn to live, forever only preparing to live, and so it ends. I sense this question is an ancient diagnosis and a diagnosis of me today. The mind wandering elsewhere even in this moment, I too catch before this sentence.
✍️Your Answer
The lineage of the ancients ends here. Now it is your turn before the question. There is no right answer — only how you, today, would answer.
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