something. Expecting is letting something come toward oneself as a possible making-present. All expecting of a [future] making-present is also the expectation (in addition, but just as originally) of something.
Expecting, as the expecting of a making-present, is referred (the way that making-present is) to the life-world of one’s practical concerns.155 From the start, human existence is held in an encountering concern for what can be produced, used, and procured—in the broadest sense, for what it can be concerned with. But concern, as absorption in the world of one’s concerns, is always and essentially (as we showed earlier) a shared-concern of human existence itself. In each of its concerns, human existence itself, as regards its ability, is not the Besorgte but the Gesorgte—i.e., it is not some “object” of the concern, but rather, the one concerned. Human existence’s expecting comes from its making-present: its ordering-up, making-available, taking-possession-of, holdingon-to. And in its expecting, human existence qua ability is itself that to which human existence primarily relates, albeit implicitly. In expecting, human existence is always already in the mode of being unto its ownmost ability. As being unto this ability [413] of its own self, human existence is “ahead of itself.” And the condition of the possibility of this being-ahead-of-itself (care),156 i.e., the fundamental structure of this very mode of being, is expecting. Care is possible as what it is only insofar as its being is time itself, as an expecting-qua-making-present. But making-present is the ur-temporal meaning of familiarity with the world. Ahead-of-oneself in familiarity-with [bei]—that is expectingqua-making-present, a determinate temporality of the time that constitutes the being of human existence.157
Since human existence’s ability is never something that could be “just there” like a thing; and since, therefore, it is not a merely-present thing that can arrive: the word “future” is an inappropriate expression for the original “futurity” of human existence. The command, “Become what you are!”—understood ontically—is possible only if, taken ontologically, I am what I am becoming, i.e., only if the very being of my ability—namely, my being-ahead-of-myself—has the structure of expecting.
Expecting is not only expecting a making-present, and it is not only for such a making-present. Instead, it is for a making-present as retaining something in the sense of a care for retaining, a not-letting-slip-away. Concern that is factically referred to the world, like losing oneself in the
155. [Moser (p. 817.8–9) records “die vorhandene besorgte Umwelt,” whereas GA 21 (p. 412.22) has “die zuhandene besorgte Umwelt.” I follow the latter, and render zuhandene as “practical.”]
156. [Moser (p. 817.28) has der Sorge.]157. [The subordinate clause could modify either Zeitlichkeit or Zeit.]