Every version of reality you experience is already the past. Your brain processes, constructs, then shows it to you. You have never once lived in the actual present moment. You are always, slightly, too late.
That is why ego is so tiring. It does not only want things. It wants witnesses. It wants reassurance. It wants to feel secure through visibility. Marcus offers a harder answer: become solid enough that praise stops feeling necessary.
A lot of inner conflict comes from wanting to be seen. Not always admired in some grand way, just noticed, chosen, validated, confirmed. A person can seem composed and still be living at the mercy of other people’s attention.
His point is not that recognition means nothing. It is that building yourself on it will make you unstable. Other people’s opinions shift too quickly, and a self that depends on them will keep shifting with them.