Children
Teach us to project ourselves into the future
September 3rd 2014
The past is only for drawing lessons from; it is pointless going back to it or dwelling on it; we should be thinking about the future. Those who are attached to the past make no progress; they become paralysed. It’s elderly people who continually revisit their past; they cannot see how they could project themselves into the future. And yet, there is a future for them too, but they do not think about it, and they constantly recount the same stories of their youth. This is understandable, of course, but they should observe children more – children continually talk of what they will do when they grow up. Why not imitate them? To be a child means to be done with the past, for it is always the future that counts. We should all be like children.
When we say that certain elderly people have gone back to being children, it’s not usually a good thing, that’s true. But that is what happens to all those who have refused to become true children, for whom there is always something new to discover and marvel at. Those who do not seek consciously to become children are in danger of becoming so one day by force of circumstance – through becoming senile.