Great people always live simultaneously in several times - the present, the future, and the eternal. They need to figure out how to co-exist in all of them. Sometimes forsaking the present for the future, sometimes for the eternal, and sometimes forsaking everything for the present.
They see a future or may try to create it (for example,
Alexander the great cutting the Gordian knot, and imagining a unified world). They imagine their place in the book of history (Achilles), which is to be distinguished from imagining their name in history books, that is, being famous (
not greatness).
"So in a running stream one wave we see
After another roll incessantly,
And line by line, each the other flee.
By this one, that one ever on is sped,
And this one by the other ever led
The water still does into water go,
Still the same brook, but different waters flow."
-La Boétie
To live only in the flowing present doesn't seem enough. We want to capture the eternal, THE Truth - the one and only. This is what we all want. For some it lies in philosophy, for some in love, for some in something else. We all want to hold on to something real and not make-believe.
(I didn't italicize the La Boétie quote. Writing on the flow of water, it seemed to me that the font needs to be straight to work.)
When these sensations go haywire, we get Kanye West (in Monster):
"I'm living in the future so the present is my past
My presence is a present, kiss my ass."Casanova is famous for living in the present, from a philosophical standpoint as well as a physical one (or so say literary critics), yet he wrote an autobiography, a very long one, which he cared tremendously to publish. An autobiography written for the future, or for the eternal?
Books Discussed
