By MARIA POPOVA

Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern
philosophy in the West.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives, Annie Dillard wrote i
n her timeless reflection on presence over productivity
a timely antidote to the
central anxiety of our productivity-obsessed age. Indeed, my own New Year s resol
ution has been to stop measuring my days by degree of productivity and start exp
eriencing them by degree of presence. But what, exactly, makes that possible?
This concept of presence is rooted in Eastern notions of mindfulness the ability
to go through life with crystalline awareness and fully inhabit our experience
largely popularized in the West by British philosopher and writer Alan Watts (Ja
nuary 6, 1915 November 16, 1973), who also gave us this fantastic meditation on th
e life of purpose. In the altogether excellent 1951 volume The Wisdom of Insecur
ity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (public library), Watts argues that the roo
t of our human frustration and daily anxiety is our tendency to live for the fut
ure, which is an abstraction. He writes:
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy futu
re, we are crying for the moon. We have no such assurance. The best predictions ar
e still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our kno
wledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happ
ily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finit
e world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death co
mes at the end.
What keeps us from happiness, Watts argues, is our inability to fully inhabit th
e present:
The primary consciousness, the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas ab
out it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and percei
ves nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, look
s at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able t
o make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable
(e.g., everyone will die ) that the future assumes a high degree of reality
so high
that the present loses its value.
But the future is still not here, and cannot become a part of experienced realit
y until it is present. Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abs
tract and logical elements inferences, guesses, deductions
it cannot be eaten, f
elt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a con
stantly retreating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahea
d. This is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enj
oys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will con
sist, not of solid and substantial realities, but of such abstract and superfici
al things as promises, hopes, and assurances.