To her way of thinking, I had squandered our future.
Carsten Levisen asked me if I thought the appetite for hygge in Britain was partly about a fantasy of what Britain might have become, if it had had the chance: Denmark as a kind of alternative, but squandered, possible future.
But for decades the Indian government has squandered its future.
And the stiff arm to extinction given to Ed Miliband is the quivering realisation that both politicians squandered the future of their parties.
"A country which is cutting its educational institutions into cripples loses flexibility and the power to innovate and is thus squandering its future," thundered Wolf Lepenies, a noted German sociology professor.
Of cities trying to freeze themselves in amber, obvious examples abound in Europe, and even the once recklessly-inspiring America has followed suit: whenever I go to San Francisco, I am saddened by its willingness to squander its future for the sake of a handful of Victorian houses.
Brazil is squandering its future potential in "freshwater and carbon" trading, and is shipping raw materials to create jobs elsewhere.
"Democrats are squandering the future by spending money we don't have (borrowed from China), scaring seniors with lies about Medicare, and mocking the American peoples' concerns about crime and violence in a border region plagued by murderous criminal gangs".
"In all my meetings, I conveyed a simple but serious message: The brave Egyptians who stood vigil in Tahrir Square did not risk their lives to see that opportunity for a brighter future squandered," Mr. Kerry said.
Kerry made clear that in all his meetings, he conveyed the message that Egyptians who rose up and overthrew Mubarak "did not risk their lives to see that opportunity for a brighter future squandered".
That need for reform was summarized by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, in their book "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" (2012): "All of the boastful talk of American exceptionalism cannot obscure the growing sense that the country is squandering its economic future and putting itself at risk because of an inability to govern effectively".
