INTRODUCING THE FUTURE: ALL OUR TOMORROWS

All three tenses seem vulnerable to attack. The past is ontologically weakened by the fact that (by definition) nothing is presently happening in it, its states of affairs are no longer existent, and its material contents owe their survival to being in the present. The present seems to borrow its breadth (or depth) from the other tenses: it lives on borrowed time. And the future – as we shall see – has nothing determinate in it. To say this, however, far from undermining any of the tenses, is to acknowledge that they do not stand alone. There is no present without a past to inform it and a future to give it direction; and there is no future without a past-informed present to anticipate it. The future, therefore, requires no special defence.

The unknown future

When I began this book in earnest, I estimated that I had an actuarial average of about 7,000 or 8,000 tomorrows compared with my 22,000 yesterdays. Quite a few todays later, the number of the former is significantly less and of the latter rather more. I have of course a clearer idea of the number of my yesterdays than tomorrows and can calculate their number precisely because there is a precise number to calculate. This highlights a more general point, in addition to the mathematical one that I am over three quarters through the time for which Raymond Tallis is a walking, talking, thinking enterprise; namely, that the uncertainty in “over three quarters” comes from my tomorrows rather than my yesterdays: I know what is on the numerator but not what is on the denominator. While I can be certain that I have just under 3,500 fewer tomorrows than lay before me when I began this book a decade or so ago, I do not know which tomorrow will be the tomorrow after there will be no more tomorrows. Even if I had a suicide pact with myself, I couldn't guarantee that I would honour it or that I would make it to the appointed day. “Call no life spanned until it is complete” we might say.