Time & Perspective Quote by Samuel Alexander

Alexander’s line turns a mushy, modern word into something almost physical: an “object” you can hold in the mind, label, and stash in your private cabinet. Calling an expectation a “future object” is slyly deflationary. It doesn’t dignify expectation as prophecy or hope; it treats it as a mental thing we manufacture in advance and then start relating to as if it were already part of the world.

The second clause does the real work: “recognised as belonging to me.” Expectation isn’t just anticipating events; it’s a quiet act of ownership. You don’t merely think something will happen - you begin to feel entitled to it. That possessive subtext explains why expectations so easily curdle into resentment. When the future refuses to deliver, it doesn’t feel like disappointment in a neutral forecast; it feels like theft.

Context matters: Alexander was a metaphysician working in an era when British philosophy was wrestling with how mind and world connect, how time is experienced, how “mental contents” can be talked about without mysticism. He’s mapping expectation as a structured relation: the mind projects a candidate piece of reality into the not-yet, then tags it with the ego’s signature.

The brilliance is how contemporary it sounds. Consumer culture and social media have industrialized this “belonging” impulse - curated life plans, algorithmic promises, the sense that outcomes are deliverables. Alexander’s phrasing exposes the trap: the more your expectations feel like property, the more your future becomes a battlefield over what you think you’re owed.