Both of these desires—the one for refuge in the future and the one to capture the present—are ways of denying that human life is about motion and change, not perfection and stasis. The liberation festival is an example of rightly prioritizing the motion of freedom itself, above the achievement of particular ends—putting the journey before the destination, as the saying goes. It is also significant that this festival was a celebration of the
freedom that the French achieved (but, of course, not necessary to bring this liberation about). The example of art shows that all valuable human efforts inevitably end and give way to a new lack—this is the sense in which, for de Beauvoir, people are constantly transcending themselves and always take on new projects as soon as they complete their current ones. A finite present is impossible (because the present constantly becomes part of the past) even though life is necessarily finite (because of death).