When an individual who loses his memory, or has nothing to remember, will not become a hoping one but remains a remembering one, that is a form of the unhappy. Thus were an individual to lose himself in antiquity, or in the Middle Ages, or whatever other period, but in such a way that this was definitely real for him, or if he lost himself in his own childhood or youth in such a way that that was decidedly real for him, then strictly he would not be a genuinely unhappy individual. Were I to imagine, on the other hand, a person who has never had a childhood himself, this age having passed him by without acquiring significance for him, but who now, say by becoming a teacher of children, discovered all the beauty that lies in childhood, and would now remember his own childhood, always look back upon it; then he indeed would be a very fitting example. He wants in retrospect to discover the significance of what, for him, is past and nevertheless remember it in its significance. Were I to imagine someone who had lived without appreciating the joy of life, or its pleasures, and who now at death’s door caught sight of it, but didn’t die, which would have been the best, but revived though not to live over again, then he could well be considered in the matter of who was the unhappiest. Unhappy individuals who hope never have the same pain as those who remember. Hoping individuals always have a more gratifying disappointment. The unhappiest one will always, therefore, be found among the unhappy rememberers.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Søren Kierkegaard