In this essay, I will investigate my views on living for the now versus working for the future.

I’m thinking about this topic at this time in my life, because I recently abandoned an almost decade long project working for my future, and, after a traumatic experience, started living for the now.

Having stumbled into this change of lifestyle almost by circumstance, but already having noticed a significant drop in dissatisfaction and increase in happiness, I’ve been keen to gain more clarity on my own needs and motivations with regards to potentially prioritizing what rather certainly brings me happiness in the short-term, over that which only might bring me a higher degree of financial comfortability in the future.

Let’s start with what brought me to prioritize for the future originally, and then move on to how I see that choice today, and how I see myself now living more spontaneously and for the now.

My depression the year before graduating

In the spring of 2015, I was about half-way through my master’s degree in mathematics, when I suffered a roughly one month-long depression, which anhedonic symptoms brought me to consider the question of why I should continue living…