There’s a line in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters that I keep coming back to:
For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
In the book, the demon Screwtape councils his nephew on how to tempt a human soul. Screwtape says to draw us away from the present and toward the future, “the thing least like eternity”. Our vices, like fear and ambition, are rooted in looking ahead. We can lose days fearing things that will never happen; we can lose years lamenting the person we never became.
Lewis does not dismiss planning, for planning tomorrow’s work is one of today’s duties. But we ought not to give our hearts to the future. Our treasure does not lie there.