F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tragic Insight: Why We Keep Fighting Against Time and Always Lose

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald ended his masterpiece with this haunting image: we're all rowing forward desperately while the current pulls us backward. It's not just poetic—it's brutally accurate about human nature. We strain toward the future, toward our dreams and ambitions, while the past constantly reclaims us. Our memories, our formative experiences, our unresolved histories—they pull with force stronger than our forward momentum.

Gatsby himself embodied this perfectly, trying to recreate a lost love, believing he could turn back time through sheer will and wealth. He couldn't. None of us can. Yet we keep rowing.

For Boomers, the current was cultural nostalgia—the pull of 1960s idealism, revolutionary music, and youthful certainties that shaped their identities even as they navigated corporate realities. Gen X felt a different undertow: economic promises that evaporated, stable career models their parents enjoyed but that vanished before their eyes, forcing constant adaptation while haunted by what "should have been."

Today's generation confronts a newly intensified current. Social media archives every moment into permanent, searchable history. Algorithms shape future recommendations based on past behavior, creating feedback loops that reinforce who you were rather than who you're becoming. AI learns from historical patterns, effectively encoding yesterday's data into tomorrow's decisions. The digital past doesn't fade—it accumulates weight.

This doesn't diminish the struggle; it illuminates why Fitzgerald's image endures. Yes, the current is relentless. Yes, we'll never fully escape it. But recognizing this truth doesn't mean surrender—it means understanding that the act of rowing itself, that refusal to drift, defines us more than any imagined arrival point.