 This characterization of human life, then, posits the notion that time is in man, for the events in men’s lives are related by their position in time. “I am I and my circumstances”, as the starting point of the human condition, also expresses the fact that the living experience of the individual consists of something that takes place temporally as well as spatially. What does “I am I and my circumstances” imply, then, in this sense? Ortega’s emphasis on man as a being-that-lives-in-the-world may suggest something like a purpose, an end; however, a specific end was never his intended purpose. The here-and-now of the individual becomes his primary concern. Indeed, he tended to define individuals’ “circumstances” in terms of “certain elemental, basic phenomena that involve human society” and that in actual fact imposes themselves from the outside on the historical process that he theoretically followed from within. As the temporality of man is very much a part of the here-and-now, man’s being-in-the-making, for Ortega, constitutes a “happening” toward the future. The future is not-here-yet and the past is no-longer-here and these two features tend to permeate the very center of man’s being as their positions are related to each other in time. As death relates to the individual’s internal finitude, the past and present relate to his or her finitude in its external, temporal manifestation. The present—the here-and-now—becomes understood as that moment during which the past and future are divided. The life of the present moment—when “some men are born and when some men die”—in its very essence “is boxed in”, Ortega averred, “between other lives which came before or which are to come after…” (Obras, V: 35–37). Once an individual becomes aware of himself or herself as a being based on the facts of his or her past (such facts as where one was born or who one’s parents were), and also as projected towards the future which he or she chooses, the individual will assume full responsibility for his or her life and choices. Ortega viewed the future as the more important aspect of temporality because it is the “open area” toward which man directs himself and in which man manifests his own being. The individual directs himself or herself toward the future and, accordingly, takes upon himself or herself the inheritance of the past, thereby becoming oriented to his or her actual and present predicament. In short, the present originates from the past so as to engender the future.