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ObjectionThe future is not yours
To stake your life on the future is to hang it on what does not depend on us.
Objects to
- To define oneself by one's projects is to place the meaning of one's life in what is not yet: a goal to reach, a work to finish, a future to build.
- Yet of all this, almost nothing . An illness, an accident, a setback, and the patiently raised edifice collapses. Whoever is happy only once the goal is reached entrusts his happiness to fortune, which owes him nothing.
- Worse: the goal once reached, another rises at once. Always straining toward the next stage, the man of projects never enjoys arriving; he lives on borrowed time, awaiting a rest he himself keeps pushing back.
Therefore So to rest one's life on the future is to build on ground that is not one's own: it remains to be seen whether it is wise to lodge there the whole worth of one's days.
Deepenings
The share of fortune
- The ancients called « fortune » all that, in a life, does not rest on our will: health, success, the time we are granted. The project depends on it through and through.
- This is why the wisdoms of acceptance advise not to fasten one's peace to what one does not control: not to give up acting, but so as not to place one's happiness in hands that are not one's own.
Possible resolutions of the objection
Challenges