Nows & Laters
This week I’m sharing a Farnam Street post from 2021. Too Busy to Pay Attention.
In one of Einstein’s dreams, people live forever. In this world, the population is divided into the Nows and the Laters.
The Nows note that with infinite lives, they can do all they can imagine … Each person will be a lawyer, a bricklayer, a writer, an accountant, a painter, a physician, a farmer. The Nows are constantly reading new books, studying new trades, new languages. In order to taste the infinities of life, they begin early and never go slowly…They are the owners of the cafés, the college professors, the doctors and nurses, the politicians, the people who rock their legs constantly whenever they sit down.
The Laters reason that there is no hurry to begin their classes at university, to learn a second language, to read Voltaire or Newton, to seek promotion in their jobs, to fall in love, to raise a family. For all these things, there is an infinite span of time. In endless time, all things can be accomplished. Thus all things can wait. Indeed, hasty actions breed mistakes … The Laters sit in cafés sipping coffee and discussing the possibilities of life.
If you recognized yourself or the people in your life in these descriptions, it’s not surprising. People in this world of infinite time are strikingly familiar to us because we live our lives as if we are going to live forever. We bury our awareness of our mortality beneath our busyness or convince ourselves that there will be time to live the lives we want ‘later’.