Ego and Time

That experience of savouring something because we will not get it again, like the last day of a brilliant holiday or the end of a special meal, or perhaps the last day of a decade in our life or a year is often flavoured by thought of the future and no longer having this special moment. But this is actually wrong.

When can we savour something?

There is only one answer regardless when we do it and that answer is now.

The thought that we will not be able to do it in the future is impossible because you can only savour now.

The reason why we think to the future comes from this idea of a fixed being passing through time that will travel into the future and no longer have this experience. But this is wrong. Future self is not the same as present self. Indeed future self cannot savour this experience because it will be savouring something else.

That idea that they are connected ultimately comes from memory. Future self will have access to memories of what is happening now. But that doesn't make it the same as this self now. The person looking out of those eyes now is not the same as the one looking out of future eyes. And while it has access to memory, this is like giving someone a book and when they read it thinking they will be you.

So there is no one to savour this for but ourselves now, and thoughts of the future are not really relevant.

Those experiences we have looking into the Past and thinking I wish I was there again are no different from watching a movie and wanting to be the person in the film, or day dreaming about being our role model. Wishing to be some where else, or someone else is just basic displeasure with our current situation which is fair enough. But we'd do better to deal with the problem in the present than day dream about times gone or other people's lives, and perhaps before even that just face the feelings of discomfort and displeasure themselves since they are what are upsetting us away from the Present. So back in the Present the past and the future don't matter do much and we just spend some time getting used to whatever feelings and aspects of present experience we are running from.

Then when we savour the present we don't need to hold onto it or store it for later, because later we will be savouring that.