When I was in college there was an older woman doing my course who was a little like this - had lived all over the world, and had had the kind of wild life that I envied. I learned from her that memories of good times don't make you happy - quite the opposite, in fact, if your present is a let-down.
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
I feel like what he's saying is similar to the way that the open interval between 0 and 1 has no end when viewed as an open set in real analysis. Which is nice, but the only time I felt that I could advance time by infinitesimally small increments I was on mushrooms.
While that sounds romantic and liberating, the reality is that our experience in the present is shaped by the events of the past and anticipation of the future. The greatest sources of fulfillment in my life are the result of thoughtful consideration of the future that took place in the past.
