Well, if we were still living at a time when religion held sway, salvation might be an option because the teachings of the divine were everything to us. All we had to do was obey them and consequently have little to think about. But religion has lost its power and now there is no real belief in God. With nothing to rely on, everyone is filled with anxiety and doubt. Everyone is living for themselves.
No, it’s not an illusion. You see, to you, in that moment, the coolness or warmth of the well water is an undeniable fact. That’s what it means to live in your subjective world. There is no escape from your subjectivity. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but how you are.
Your friend is insecure, so he can’t go out. Think about it the other way around. He doesn’t want to go out, so he’s creating a state of anxiety. Your friend had the goal of not going out beforehand, and he’s been manufacturing a state of anxiety and fear as a means to achieve that goal.
In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitely denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly, the Freudian view of trauma is fascinating. Freud’s idea is that a person’s psychic wounds (traumas) cause his or her present unhappiness. When you treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there is an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: “No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences — the so-called trauma — but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.
If I can stay in my room all the time, without ever going out, my parents will worry. I can get all of my parents’ attention focused on me. They’ll be extremely careful around me and always handle me with kid gloves. On the other hand, if I take even one step out of the house, I’ll just become part of a faceless mass whom no one pays attention to. I’ll be surrounded by people I don’t know and just end up average, or less than average. And no one will take special care of me any longer… Such stories about reclusive people are not uncommon.
If we proceed with your reasoning, any offense committed in anger can be blamed on anger and will no longer be the responsibility of the person because, essentially, you are saying that people cannot control their emotions.
You did not fly into a rage and then start shouting. It is solely that you got angry so that you could shout. In other words, in order to fulfill the goal of shouting, you created the emotion of anger.
As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and he became very polite. Then, for the next five minutes or so, she carried on a conversation in her best telephone voice. Once she hung up, in a moment, her expression changed again and she went straight back to yelling at her daughter.
If the past determined everything and couldn’t be changed, we who are living today would no longer be able to take effective steps forward in our lives. What would happen as a result? We would end up with the kind of nihilism and pessimism that loses hope in the world and gives up on life.
Why are you rushing for answers? You should arrive at answers on your own, not rely upon what you get from someone else. Answers from others are nothing than stopgap measures; they’re of no value.
You think you’d be happier if you were like him. Which means that you are not happy right now. This is because you have not learned to love yourself. And to try to love yourself, you are wishing to be reborn as a different person. You’re hoping to become like Y and throw away who you are now.
You find living hard, and even wish you could be reborn as a different person. But you are unhappy now because you yourself chose being unhappy. Not because you were born under an unlucky star.
No one desires evil.
Without question, there is no shortage of behavior that is evil. But no one, not even the most hardened criminal, becomes involved in crime purely out of a desire to engage in evil acts. Every criminal has an internal justification for getting involved in crime.
At some stage in your life, you chose “being unhappy.” It’s not because you were born into unhappy circumstances or ended up in unhappy situation. It’s that you judged “being unhappy” to be good for you.
People always choose not to change.
Although there are some small inconveniences and limitations, you probably think that the lifestyle you have now is the most practical one, and that it’s easier to leave things as they are. If you stay just like this, experience enables you to respond properly to events as they occur, while guessing the results of one’s actions. You could say it’s like driving your old, familiar car. It might rattle a bit, but one can take that into account and maneuver easily. On the other hand, if one chooses a new lifestyle, no one can predict what might happen to the new self, or have any idea how to deal with events as they arise. It will be hard to see ahead to the future, and life will be filled with anxiety. A more painful and unhappy life might lie ahead. Simple put, people have various complaints about things, but it’s easier and more secure to be just the way one is.
When we try to change our lifestyle, we put our great courage to the test. There is the anxiety generated by changing, and the disappointment attendant to not changing.
Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.
As long as you live that way, in the realm of possibility of “If only such and such were the case,” you will never be able to change. Because saying “If only I could be like Y” is an excuse to yourself for not changing.
No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. That’s you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.
You’re wrong. You notice only your shortcomings because you’ve resolved to not start liking yourself. In order to not like yourself, you don’t see your strong points and focus only on your shortcomings.
What do you think was the scariest thing to her, the thing she wanted to avoid most of all? It was that the man would reject her, of course. The fact that her unrequited love would negate everything for her, the very existence and possibility of “I.” This aspect is deeply present in adolescent unrequited love. But as long as she has a fear of blushing, she can go on thinking, I can’t be with him because I have this fear of blushing. It could end without her ever working up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and she could convince herself that he would reject her anyway. And finally, she can live in the possibility that If only my fear of blushing had gotten better, I could have…
Why do you dislike yourself? Why do you focus only on your shortcomings, and why have you decided to not start liking yourself? It’s because you are overly afraid of being disliked by other people and getting hurt in your interpersonal relationships.
Being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an “individual.”
As long as there is someone out there somewhere, you will be haunted by loneliness.
All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.
There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present.
You were so afraid of interpersonal relationships that you came to dislike yourself. You’ve avoided interpersonal relationships by disliking yourself.
And then he said, “What would you do if you got taller? You know, you’ve got a gift for getting people to relax.” With a man who’s big and strong, it’s true, it does seem he can end up intimidating people just because of his size. With someone small like me, on the other hand, people let go of their wariness. So it made me realize that having a small build was a desirable thing both to me and to those around me. In other words, there was a transformation of values. I’m not worried about my height anymore.
Even the kind of person who is regarded socially as a success, who doesn’t need to debase himself in relationship with other people, still has some feelings of inferiority. Even the businessman who amasses enormous wealth, the peerless beauty who is the envy of all, and the Olympic gold medalist — every one of them is plagued by feelings of inferiority.
People enter this world as helpless beings. And people have the universal desire to escape from that helpless state. Alder called this the “pursuit of superiority.”
This is something you could think of as simply “hoping to improve” or “pursuing an ideal state.” All the advancements of science throughout human history are due to this “pursuit of superiority.”
The counterpart of this is the feeling of inferiority. Everyone is in this “condition of wanting to improve” that is the pursuit of superiority. One holds up various ideals or goals and heads toward them. However, on not being able to reach one’s ideals, one harbors a sense of being lesser. For instance, there are chefs who, the more inspired and accomplished they become, are forever beset with the sort of feeling of inferiority that makes them say to themselves, I’m still not enough, or I’ve got to bring my cooking to the next level, and that sort of thing.
The pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are not diseases but stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. If it is not used in the wrong way, the feeling of inferiority, too, can promote striving and growth.
One tries to get rid of one’s feeling of inferiority and keep moving forward. One’s never satisfied with one’s present situation — even if it’s just a single step, one wants to make progress. One wants to be happier. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the state of this kind of feeling of inferiority. There are, however, people who lose the courage to take a single step forward, who cannot accept the fact that the situation can be changed by making realistic efforts. People who, before even doing anything, simply give up and say things like “I’m not good enough anyway” or “Even if I tried, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
At base, “complex” refers to an abnormal mental state made up of a complicated group of emotions and ideas, and has nothing to do with the feeling of inferiority.
There is nothing particularly wrong with the feeling of inferiority itself. The inferiority complex, on the other hand, refers to a condition of having begun to use one’s feeling of inferiority as a kind of excuse. So one thinks to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, or I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married. When someone is insisting on the logic of “A is the situation, so B cannot be done” in such a way in everyday life, that is not something that fits in the feeling of inferiority category. It is an inferiority complex.
Feelings of inferiority are something that everyone has, but staying in that condition is too heavy to endure forever.
The healthiest way is to try to compensate through striving and growth. For instance, it could be by applying oneself to one’s studies, engaging in constant training, or being diligent in one’s work. However, people who aren’t equipped with that courage end up stepping into an inferiority complex.
Inferiority complex can also develop into another special mental state. It’s the “superiority complex.”
It’s to act as if one is indeed superior and to indulge in a fabricated feeling of superiority.
A familiar example would be “giving authority.”
One makes a show of being on good terms with a powerful person. And by doing that, one lets it be known that one is special. Behaviors like misrepresenting one’s work experience or excessive allegiance to particular brands of clothing are forms of giving authority, and probably also have aspects of superiority complex. In each case, it isn’t that the “I” is actually superior or special. It is only that one is making the “I” look superior by linking it to authority. In short, it’s a fabricated feeling of superiority.
Those who make themselves look bigger on borrowed power are essentially living according to other people’s value systems — they are living other people’s lives.
There’s the kind of person who likes to boast about his achievements. Someone who clings to his past glory and is always recounting memories of the time when his light shone brightest.
Those who go so far as to boast about things out loud actually have no confidence in themselves.
The one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.
If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one “the way I am.” This is a full-blown superiority complex.
There is one last example I’d like to give, a complex example that deals with boasting. It is a pattern leading to a particular feeling of superiority that manifests due to the feeling of inferiority itself becoming intensified. Concrete speaking, it’s bragging about one’s own misfortune.
The person who assumes a boasting manner when talking about his upbringing and the like, the various misfortunes that have rained down upon him. If someone should try to comfort this person, or suggest some change be made, he’ll refuse the helping hand by saying, “You don’t understand how I feel.”
Such people try to make themselves “special” by way of their experience of misfortune, and with the single fact of their misfortune try to place themselves above others.
“You don’t understand how I feel” is likely to contain a certain degree of truth. But as long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be “special,” one will always need that misfortune.
Think about it this way. When we refer to the pursuit of superiority, there’s a tendency to think of it as the desire to try to be superior to other people; to climb higher, even if it means kicking others down. Adler does not uphold such attitudes. Rather, he’s saying that one the same level playing field, there are people who are moving forward, and there are people who are moving forward behind them. Though the distance covered and the speed of walking differ, everyone is walking equally in the same flat place. The pursuit of superiority is the mindset of taking a single step forward on one’s own feet, not the mindset of competition of the sort that necessitates aiming to be greater than other people.
Life is not a competition. It’s enough to just keep moving in a forward direction, without competing with anyone. And, of course, there is no need to compare oneself with others.
A healthy feeling of superiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.
We are not the same, but we are equal.
You’re the only one worrying about your appearance.
When one is conscious of competition and victory and defeat, it is inevitable that feelings of inferiority will arise. Because one is constantly comparing oneself to others and thinking, I beat that person or I lost to that person. The inferiority complex and the superiority complex are extensions of that.
Before you know it, you start to see each and every person, everyone in the whole world, as your enemy.
You start to think that people are always looking down on you and treating you with scorn, thay they’re all enemies who must never be underestimated, who lie in wait for any opening and attack at the drop of a hat. In short, that the world is a terrifying place.
This is what so terrifying about competition. Even if you’re not a loser, even if you’re someone who keeps on winning, if you are someone who has placed himself in competition, you will never have a moment’s peace. You don’t want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning if you don’t want to be a loser. You can’t trust other people. The reason so many people don’t really feel happy while they’re building up their success in the eyes of society is that they are living in competition. Because to them, the world is a perilous place that is overflowing with enemies.
There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you.
If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about that person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behavior, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle.
For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviors. In many cases, this is done with the goal of getting attention and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight.
Let’s say you and a friend have been discussing the current political situation. Before long, it turns into a heated argument, and neither of you is willing to accept any differences of opinion until finally it reaches the point where he starts engaging in personal attacks — that you’re stupid, and it’s because of people like you that this country doesn’t change, that sort of thing.
In this case, what is the other person’s goal? Is it only that he wants to discuss politics? No, it isn’t. It’s that he finds you unbearable, and he wants to criticize and provoke you, and make you submit through a power struggle. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must no get taken in.
One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you are right, try not to criticize the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into.
The moment one is convinced that “I am right” in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.
That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from “the rightness of the assertions” to “the state of the interpersonal relationship.” In other words, the conviction that “I am right” leads to the assumption that “this person is wrong,” and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through.
In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there.
Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles — none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people.
When you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices. It clouds your judgment, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.
There are two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the two objectives for they psychology that supports these behaviors are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
For example, a man sends out resumes to find work and gets interviews, only to be rejected by one company after another. It hurts his pride. He starts to wonder what the purpose in working is if he has to go through such things. Or he makes a big mistake at work. The company is going to lose a huge sum of money because of him. Feeling utterly hopeless, as if he’s plunged into darkness, he can’t bear the thought of coming in to work the following day. None of these are examples of the work itself becoming disagreeable. What is disagreeable is being criticized or rebuked by others through the work, getting labeled as having no ability or being incompetent or unsuited to the work, and hurting the dignity of one’s irreplaceable self. In other words, everything is an interpersonal relationship issue.
In relationships between lovers or married couples, there are times when, after a certain point, one becomes exasperated with everything one’s partner says or does. For instance, she doesn’t care for the way he eats; his slovenly appearance at home fills her with revulsion, and even his snoring sets her off. Even though until a few months ago, none of it had ever bothered her before.
The person feels this way because at some stage she has resolved to herself, I want to end this relationship, and she has been looking around for the material with which to end it. The other person hasn’t changed at all. It is her own goal that has changed. Look, people are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them. A man of perfect character could come along, and one would have no difficulty in digging up some reason to dislike him. That’s exactly why the world can become a perilous place at any time, and it’s always possible to see everyone as one’s enemies.
So I am making up flaws in other people just so that I can avoid my life tasks, and further more, so I can avoid interpersonal relationships? And I am running away by thinking of other people as my enemies?
This is the danger of the desire for recognition. Why is it that people seek recognition from others? In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education.
Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions, too.
If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you? You are living only your own life.
When one seeks recognition from others, and concerns oneself only with how one is judged by others, in the end, one is living other people’s lives.
Wishing so hard to be recognized will lead to a life of following expectations held by other people who want you to be “this kind of person.” In other words, you throw away who you really are and live other people’s lives. And please remember this: If you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. Someone might not act the way you want him to, but it doesn’t do to get angry. That’s only natural.
So one could think, God is watching, so accumulate good deeds. But that and the nihilist view that “there is no God, so all evil deeds are permitted” are two side of the same coin. Even supposing that God did not exist, and that we could not gain recognition from God, we would still have to live this life. Indeed, it is in order to overcome the nihilism of a godless world that it is necessary to deny recognition from other people.
In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically.
Intervening in other people’s tasks and taking on other people’s tasks turn one’s life into something heavy and full of hardship. If you are leading a life of worry and suffering — which stems from interpersonal relationships — learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.
What another person thinks of you — if he or she likes you or dislikes you — that is that person’s task, not mine.
In other words, we seek release from interpersonal relationships. We seek to be free from interpersonal relationships. However, it is absolutely impossible to live all alone in the universe. In light of what we have discussed until now, the conclusion we reach regarding “What is freedom?” should be clear.
In short, that “freedom is being disliked by other people.”
It’s that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.
It is certainly distressful to be disliked. If possible, one would like to live without being disliked by anyone. One wants to satisfy one’s desire for recognition. But conducting oneself in such a way as not to be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and is also impossible. There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.
One neither prepares to be self-righteous nor becomes defiant. One just separates tasks. There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task. And again, thinking things like He should like me or I’ve done all this, so it’s strange that he doesn’t like me, is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person’s tasks. One moves forward without fearing the possibility of being disliked. One does not live as if one were rolling downhill, but instead climbs the slope that lies ahead. That is freedom for a human being.
The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationship will all at once change into things of lightness.
But to think to myself, He hit me that time, and that is why our relationship went bad, is a Freudian etiological way of thinking. The Adlerian telelogy position completely reverses the cause-and-effect interpretation. That is to say, I brought out the memory of being hit because I don’t want my relationship with my father to get better.
That’s right. For me, it was more convenient to not repair my relationship with my father. I could use having a father like that as an excuse for why my own life wasn’t going well. That for me was a virtue. And there was also the aspect of taking revenge on a feudal father.
Because I can just change the goal, that fixes everything.
They make a leap from being “life’s protagonist” to becoming “the world’s protagonist.” For this reason, whenever they come into contact with another person, all they can think is, What will this person give me? However — and this is something that does not hold true for princes and princesses — this expectation is not going to be satisfied on every occasion. Because other people are not living to satisfy your expectations.
Then when those expectations are not satisfied, they become deeply disillusioned and feel as if they have been horribly insulted. And they become resentful, and think, That person didn’t do anything for me. That person let me down. That person isn’t my comrade anymore. He’s my enemy. People who hold the belief that they are the center of the world always end up losing their comrades before long.
Once you know how big the world is, you will see that all the hardship you went through in school was a storm in a teacup. The moment you leave that teacup, that raging storm will be gone, and a gentle breeze will greet you in its place.
What’s unpleasant is the feeling that from the words “Good job!” one is being talked down to. In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being “the passing for judgment by a person of ability on a person of no ability.”
One wishes to be praised by someone. Or conversely, one decides to give praise to someone. This is proof that one is seeing all interpersonal relationships as “vertical relationships.”
For example, there are men who verbally abuse their wives, who do all the housework, with such remarks as “You’re not bringing in any money, so I don’t want to hear it” or “It’s thanks to me that there’s food on the table” and “You have everything you need, so what are you complaining about?”. They are probably afraid that women will grow wise to their situation and start earning more than men do, and that women will start asserting themselves. The see all interpersonal relations as vertical relationships, and they are afraid of being seen by women as beneath them. That is to say, they have intense, hidden feelings of inferiority.
It’s quite simple. It is when one is able to feel “I am beneficial to the community” that one can have a true sense of one’s worth.
You’re treating your relationships with your friends as vertical. Even if you are not treating in a boss-or-subordinate kind of way, it is as if you are saying, “A is above me, and B is below me,” for example, or “I’ll follow A’s advice, but ignore what B say,” or “I don’t mind breaking my promise to C.”
The courage to overcome the fear of being taken advantage of comes from self-acceptance. If one can simply accept oneself as one is, and ascertain that one can do and what one cannot, one becomes able to understand that “taking advantage” is the other person’s task, and getting to the core of “confidence in others” become less difficult.
People who suffer from stammering are looking at only a part of things but judging the whole. With workaholics, the focus is solely on one specific aspect of life.
They probably try to justify that by saying, “It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.” But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern oneself with everything, from household chores and child-rearing to one’s friendships and hobbies and so on.
For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself. Adler came up with an extremely simple answer to address this reality. Namely, that the feeling of “I am beneficial to the community” or “I am of use to someone” is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.
Whether they are trying to be especially good, or trying to be especially bad, the goal is the same: to attract the attention of other people, get out of the “normal” condition and become a “special being.” That is their only goal.
This is the “pursuit of easy superiority.”
But if life were climbing a mountain in order to reach the top, then the greater part of life would end up being “en route.” That is to say, one’s “real life” would begin with one’s trek on the mountain-side, and the distance one as traveled up until that point would be a “tentative life” led by a “tentative me.”
Now, suppose you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, what would have mean for your life? With accidents and diseases and the like, people don’t always make it all the way, and mountain climbing itself is fraught with pitfalls and often ends in failure. So one’s life would be interrupted “en route,” with just this “tentative me” leading a “tentative life.” What kind of life would that be?
Do not treat it as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. Seemingly linear existence is actually a series of dots; in other words, life is a series of moments. A series of moments called “now.” We can live only in the here and now. Our lives exist only in moments. Adults who do not know this attempt to impose “linear” lives onto young people. Their thinking is that staying on the conventional tracks — good university, big company, stable household — is a happy life. But life is not made of lines or anything like that.
You set objectives for the distant future, and think of now as your preparatory period. You think, I really want to this, and I’ll do it when the time comes. This is a way of living that postpones life. As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere and will pass our days only one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience. But a “here and now” in which one is studying for an entrance examination in the distant future, for example, is the real thing.
Living earnestly here and now is itself a dance. One must not get too serious.
The greatest life-lie of all is not to live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something. Until now, you have turned away from the here and now and shone a light only on invented pasts and futures. You have told a great lie to your life, to these irreplaceable moments.
Since neither the past or nor the future exists, let’s talk about now.