THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE UNINITIATED

By Ljubica Zikic 

Translated by Ilija Šaula with assistance from Copilot

The contemporary American writer Irvin D. Yalom has written novels inspired by the lives of well‑known philosophers (Nietzsche, Spinoza, Schopenhauer), so his books naturally carry a philosophical tone. I read When Nietzsche Wept, The Spinoza Problem, and The Schopenhauer Cure with great pleasure, because as I read, I kept recognizing attitudes toward life that I myself hold, to a greater or lesser degree. From experience, I’ve concluded that we tend to love writers whose views resemble our own — and there is nothing wrong with that.

In The Schopenhauer Cure, in Chapter 13, Yalom writes: “When, at the end of life, most people look back, they discover that they have lived entirely provisionally. They are startled to realize that what they allowed to pass unnoticed and without enjoyment was, in fact, their life. And so, a person, deceived by hope, dances straight into the arms of death.”

I’m not entirely sure what shaped my own attitude toward life — literature, or an encounter with mortal danger in my youth — but I have always tried to turn my present into a life fully lived. I tried to experience, remember, and record every moment. As if preparing myself for great losses, I savored time with my parents, my husband, my friends, and “every day felt like a celebration.” That doesn’t mean everything was sweet. But it was real, and it was deep.

Even today, I believe that the present must never be treated as a prelude to something better that is supposed to come.

I leave nothing important for tomorrow. The future does not attract me; I see nothing in it more beautiful than this cloudy spring day, with its fine, silver, chilly rain that suddenly makes me want to open my floral umbrella and go for a walk.

Of course, alongside this concrete, everyday life, I also inhabit my abstract life — the one where creations arise that do not have the full clarity of conscious thought… like poetry. And so, I say: Is there anything lovelier than this shifting of seasons, from winter into spring… or that line that keeps circling in Julius’s mind, the main character of The Schopenhauer Cure:

“The trouble with a machete is that in the end it becomes a cat, of course.”

The question now is should we wait until we become cats, or should we play, rejoice, remain unburdened and innocent, refusing to surrender even a single moment to the gloom of some imagined future.

In other words: Let us preserve the child within us. Let us live without postponement. Love is the meaning of life. May it never abandon us.

These are the questions this writer raises — and they are worth every reader’s attention.