In every instant
by admin on Dec.28, 2009, under Random Musings
The past is not some instant, frozen in the distance, unchanging. It is not, either, an image receding in the mirror as we pull away, speeding into the future, which doesn’t even exist, really. We are constantly, perpetually creating our past in every instant. The now is the past.
There are no empty moments.
Each passing moment is pregnant with life, giving birth, in a flash, to a past. Our past. Do we ever leave the past? Do we ever leave it alone? Do we fictionalize and idealize those moments? We do. We don’t strand the past on a street corner with a look of bewilderment on its (our!) face, as we burn rubber into the dark night of the next moment.
We bring it along. All of them, along for the ride. Repainting, redressing and recasting them to fit. If we, as individuals, are the sum total of our past, a past which is clearly malleable and ever-changing, shifting according to our whims, then we can equally say that we are the sum total of our now. Our many nows which buld up and weigh on us.
Or, are we the sum total now of all of our future nows? If you can change your past, now, with naught but a thought, the merest hint of desire to remember things differently, then how can your now be truly your own? Isn’t your now the product of some whim, some random thought in your future?
How could we know?
