Pascal's Wisdom

As is typical for me, I have about a zillion books "in progress" at any given time... So what generally happens is that I switch back and forth between books, reading only a few snippets or pages at a crack. At some point, for most books, I reach a stage where I suddenly make it a priority and finish it swiftly -- for others, they linger on for years.

Blaise Pascal's Pensées is one of the latter category - and I am at a loss to explain why! It may be because every time I pick it up I am swept away in ponderings with the very first section I read, and then have no time to read any more.

For example - this section that I just read:

47. We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. (172)

Always remember - the present is a present!