MICHAEL MORRIS: Planning for the future amid poverty of today
For a poor person, how could deferring gratification be said to be bearable on any realistic grounds of being certain of eventually attaining it?
18 September 2022 - 17:43
The idea of instant gratification is probably most easily mocked only by those of us for whom the prospect of having to put off getting what we want most, reasonably speaking, is made that much more bearable by the certainty that getting it eventually is not wholly unrealistic.
This is simply the reasoned optimism that is at once the condition and the product of what can broadly be described as middle-class life, a life impelled by dreams of better tomorrows, and the confidence that striving to realise them really is worth the effort...
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