Much of the rat racer's tension stems from the need to feel control over the future. As a result, she lives in the future. The rat racer lives by the "what if" rather than by the "what is" —in the tense hypothetical future rather than in the calm real present. What if I don't do well on the exam? What if I don't get a promotion? What if I can't afford the mortgage on my new house? Rather than fully experiencing the here and now, she is, in the words of poet Galway Kinnell, "smearing the darkness of expectation across experience."
