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Author and thinker Alan Watts |
“The object of dread may not be an operation in the
immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, or a threatened
war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death
at the last. The ‘spoiler of the present’ may not even be a future dread. It
may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or
indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The
power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past
and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present
cannot be lived happily unless the past has been ‘cleared up’ and the future is
bright with promise.
“There can be no doubt that the power to remember and
predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter skelter chaos of disconnected
moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way, it is the achievement of the human brain,
giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But
the way in which we use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages, For it
is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable
to live fully in the present.”
— Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Insecurity” (1951)
Guest blogging for Dan today will be Alan Watts.
ReplyDelete--ye ed DAK
A worthy substitute.
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