Nows And Laters

The Nows note that with infinite lives, they can do all they can imagine … Each person will be a lawyer, a bricklayer, a writer, an accountant, a painter, a physician, a farmer. The Nows are constantly reading new books, studying new trades, new languages. In order to taste the infinities of life, they begin early and never go slowly…They are the owners of the cafés, the college professors, the doctors and nurses, the politicians, the people who rock their legs constantly whenever they sit down.

The Laters reason that there is no hurry to begin their classes at university, to learn a second language, to read Voltaire or Newton, to seek promotion in their jobs, to fall in love, to raise a family. For all these things, there is an infinite span of time. In endless time, all things can be accomplished. Thus all things can wait. Indeed, hasty actions breed mistakes … The Laters sit in cafés sipping coffee and discussing the possibilities of life.

Source: “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman- This is a fictionalised collection of dreams by Albert Einstein on the concept of time.  

This passage about the “Nows” and the “Laters” appears in the 14 May 1905 dream chapter. In this imagined dream, time is infinite, and people live forever. The people in this world are divided into two groups based on their attitudes toward time: the “Nows,” who feel an urgency to do and accomplish something so that they can make their infinite life interesting, and the “Laters,” who procrastinate, believing they have endless time to accomplish their goals.