The ordinary human concerns with the past and the future can be seen both as forms of suffering (anxiety toward the future, regret toward the past, etc.) and as illusory because they involve the failure to appreciate the primary reality of the present. In this lecture I argue that while there are certainly ways of being occupied with past or future times that we have reason to criticize, such criticism cannot base itself on any metaphysical claim to the singular or exclusive reality of the present. The task of developing useful forms of describing and assessing the different ways we can go wrong in temporalizing our lives is hindered rather than helped by the suggestion that our concerns with the past and with the future are as such forms of attachment to the Unreal.

普通人对过去和未来的关注既可以看作是痛苦的形式（对未来的焦虑，对过去的遗憾等），也可以看作是虚幻的，因为它们涉及未能理解当前的主要现实。在本次讲座中，我认为虽然我们有理由批评过去或未来的某些方式，但这种批评不能建立在对当前单一或排他现实的任何形而上学主张的基础上。开发有用的形式来描述和评估我们在时间化我们的生活中可能出错的不同方式的任务受到阻碍而不是帮助的建议，即我们对过去和未来的关注是对虚幻的依恋形式。