the two great ills which prevent us from achieving fulfilment are nostalgia and hope specifically attachment to the past and anxiety about the future These block our access to the present moment and prevent us from living life to the full It has been said that Stoicism here anticipated one of the most profound insights of psychoanalysis that he who remains the prisoner of his past will always be incapable of acting and enjoying as Freud said that the nostalgia for the lost paradises for the joys and sorrows of childhood lays upon our lives a weight as heavy as it is unknown to us