The insight into the true order of values is not easy to achieve. It is difficult for anyone to prevail in the struggle against the fear, which does not serve an old Goethean advice. In the ideal communion which Goethe draws up in his wandering years, the quaint rule is that their members must never speak of past or future, but only of the present present.Most people sacrifice the day to the day. They are not satisfied with the task of considering and solving the problems they are now posing, but in anxious thoughts they draw down on the burden of coming times. Although we can never take the second step before we have done the first, we always consider the fiftieth or the hundredth. But Johannes Muller’s theorem is one of the fundamental principles of life: “Do what is present, and wait, what will.”Very many have a strange position on the past, present and future. The past transfigures them, they despair of the future, and the present they fail to miss, by their memories and fears. But the present is the only real thing that does not seize it, never reaches life. That is why we should consciously enjoy every tolerable hour without letting it darken future clouds.
Ludwig Reiners in : Norbert Kutschki, Gedanken für den Alltag – Übersetzung: TheWolfmyinnerSoul /Arv