Hello ! This week, place to a text by Blaise Pascal, to consume as a meditation, and obviously without moderation.
For this first Newsletter, I would like to thank all those who helped me create this site: Johan, Loïc, Chiara, Gabriel, Geneviève, Dominique, Daniel, Federico, Johanna and Maximilien.
Great week everyone !
We never stand in the present time. We anticipate the future as too slow to come, as if to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop it as too prompt: so careless, that we wander in times that are not ours, and do not think of the only one that belongs to us; and so vain, that we think of those who are no longer anything, and escape without reflection the only one that remains. It’s that the present usually hurts us. We hide it from our view, because it afflicts us; and if it is pleasant to us, we regret to see it escape. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging things that are not in our power, for a time we have no assurance of arriving.
Let everyone examine their thoughts, they will find them all occupied in the past and in the future. We hardly think of the present; and, if we think about it, it’s only to take the light to dispose of the future. The present is never our end: the past and the present are our means; the only future is our end. Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and, always preparing ourselves to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées, Brunschvicg 172 / Lafuma 47