The existentialists enthusiastically concur that the “now” is more significant than the 30 seconds from “now.” The present decision, environment, and being defines in a sense a person. In fact, Albert Camus said: “Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”
The Christian worldview emphasizes the now in a slightly different way: “There is a last judgment therefore live as if it will be today.” Nothing befuddles the human heart more than the day of Judgment. Justice is inescapable and the inescapability thereof is dreadful for the unbeliever. Camus’ comments highlights that the unbelieving heart desperately seeks a way to escape the inescapable. It is a profound reality and a profound destiny for all human beings. The atheist seeks to materialize justice by minimizing it to the status of every day decision, but God’s justice is supremely different for it actually accentuates the atheist’s guilt.
Camus may have been depressed. Who knows? Existentialism is a way of creating metaphysical meaning in a meaningless and absurd universe, so, in a sense, yes, the present is more realizable or important than the future or the past. The only problem, though, and I suspect most who call themselves existentialists would agree with me, is that the present is constantly fleeting. You cannot locate the present. As soon as you say that now is now, you are artificially designating a span of time in which consciousness of that designation is available for consideration. It might be easier to rememeber that now was then, which is truly absurd if you think about it.