Tense in the Past, Present, and Future
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 10:08 pm
What is the future? Do you know what will happen? Do you look to the future and worry about it, or daydream about wonderful things that may happen in it? Or do you stay 100% focused on the present, focusing all your attention perhaps on a task immediately in front of you that you need to concentrate on? Do you think about the past a lot? Either regretting the past of else idealizing the past as a better time you had in life?
My own inclination seems to be to regret the past and worry about the future.
I can't imagine that it's healthy to live in regret and worry. Or is it? Isn't the radical opposite of those stances pride and yearning? Is one better than the other?
Someone who regrets and worries might proceed ahead carefully, whereas someone prideful and yearning may ignore dangers that are secretly lurking and become surprised and be unprepared for it. Or maybe someone who regrets and worries creates a self-fulfilling future of doom and gloom and the one who has pride and yearning has a self-fulfilling future of roses and rainbows. Or perhaps the one who regrets and worries can never be disappointed whereas the one with pride and yearning can possibly be disappointed.
And of course, there are different combinations of all those characteristics that others can possibly exhibit at different times.
Finally, is it possible to choose what to think or how to think about things? Or is it impossible to do so? Perhaps some of us can change our outlooks and some of us can't. Or perhaps we can all live in a society where happiness is mandatory.
My own inclination seems to be to regret the past and worry about the future.
I can't imagine that it's healthy to live in regret and worry. Or is it? Isn't the radical opposite of those stances pride and yearning? Is one better than the other?
Someone who regrets and worries might proceed ahead carefully, whereas someone prideful and yearning may ignore dangers that are secretly lurking and become surprised and be unprepared for it. Or maybe someone who regrets and worries creates a self-fulfilling future of doom and gloom and the one who has pride and yearning has a self-fulfilling future of roses and rainbows. Or perhaps the one who regrets and worries can never be disappointed whereas the one with pride and yearning can possibly be disappointed.
And of course, there are different combinations of all those characteristics that others can possibly exhibit at different times.
Finally, is it possible to choose what to think or how to think about things? Or is it impossible to do so? Perhaps some of us can change our outlooks and some of us can't. Or perhaps we can all live in a society where happiness is mandatory.