‘There’s always next year’

 

“if the meaning of life is tied to goal achievement, then achieving that goal can leave you with ‘emptiness’ – nothing left to provide meaning. The way many people try to get around this is simply to set another goal – ‘there’s always next year’. But this simply avoids confronting the fundamental flaw in seeing life in this way. As the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard said, life ‘must be lived forwards’, in a present that constantly transforms the future into the past. Moments in time cannot be kept hold of, yet achievements are of their essence tied to moments of success, which all too quickly drift into the past.”