The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.
Soren Kierkegaard
We all, without exception, have certain expectations from life. Whether or not we work toward materializing these expectations, we continue to hope that we will have the future we dreamed of. Life, however, is far from a bed of roses.
Every human being has a certain notion of what their future will be like. They may or may not consciously set out to get there, but the hope of getting there anyhow is there nonetheless. But life’s plans for us may not be the same as the ones we envisaged for ourselves. Things do not always go to plan, and it is this dashed hope that agonizes us more than the fact that we didn’t get what we thought we would.
Unfortunately, this disappointment is an essential part of growing up. No one ever gets everything easily, for setbacks teach us more about life and our own selves than fulfilled ambitions. One needs to understand that everyone has different expectations from life and the Almighty. Sometimes, these expectations might be mutually exclusive. In such events, someone is bound to have their dreams thwarted.
For the most part, our limited imagination and confined outlook also restricts our hopes. On the other hand, life, or fate, as some people like to call it, do not suffer from any such limitations. You may not land the job you so badly needed, or marry the person you loved from the bottom of your heart, or succeed in getting whatever it is that you so desperately wanted. The future may seem rather bleak and depressing in such cases. However, while our frustrated plans may infuse us with bitterness and pain at the outset, things often turn out just fine, or even better, going forward. The key is to keep believing in ourselves and our destiny; everything else just falls into place.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, commonly known as Soren Kierkegaard, was a Danish philosopher, poet, and social critic. Known as the first existentialist philosopher, Kierkegaard wrote: “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”