Excerpt from "Answer to Job" by Carl G. Jung

"In confinio mortis and in the evening of a long and eventful life a man will see immense vistas of time stretching out before him. Such a man no longer lives in the everyday world and in the vicissitudes of personal relationships, but in the sight of many aeons and in the movement of ideas as they pass from century to century."

Ah. This is why I admire Jung so much. He describes so vividly my own experiences and my own existence. I cannot remember how long it has been since this became my life, but I have for many years now felt this detachment from the present. The present is transient and worthless, aside from its connection to the far reaches of the past and the future, aside from its influence upon the future.

When a person can perceive his own existence through the eyes of eternity, that is when he can be the "modern man" that Jung speaks of, the man who can affect change, the man whose voice will be heard for centuries. In perceiving oneself through the eyes of eternity, many things are lost, for eternity cares not about such petty concerns as prosperity, satisfaction, or happiness. A man who sees thus must throw away his own concerns, must sacrifice his own primitive emotional longings, must live not for himself and not for those around him, but for the men and women of the future, people he will never meet, never experience. Yet it must be done. Only then can such a man call himself a prophet and an oracle. Only then can such a man become these things. When the vision of the present has been lost to the conviction of the future.