If you’ve read my post about loving fiction, you know I think a lot about our linear experience of time. The unceremonious way the future skips into the past. So many days lost, forever, to memory. Or worse, the possibility that today is my first day alive, and all my memories are implanted.
Time connects urgently to the problem of the self. Yes, yesterday could be a false memory, but I know today is real. My experience of today is part of my self. Then again, today will soon be lost, and tomorrow I’ll again wonder if yesterday was false – meaning that my current self, who knows this day is real, will be gone. So, when do I exist? In what nook of the timeline does my self reside?
Days aren’t even a small enough unit of time; every second is a new me. Moments, I called them in my fiction post. And what is a moment, if not doomed to die in an instant?
These are frightening thoughts. The void of time, that accumulating non-being, has long been my dread.
Lately, however (assuming I’ve existed lately), I’ve come to see the void as a solace. And solace, I need – like most people, I’m often overwhelmed by responsibilities, ambitions, and desires. I’m writing a book, which sometimes stresses me out. I have habits I want to break and habits I want to create. I feel obligated to help the world, but I don’t always know how. But now, whenever such a worry besieges me, I think:
“That’s not for me to worry about. I’m only a moment. That’s a job for the story.”
By story, I mean the illusion of me. The continuous, long-lived person that I used to imagine myself being. The story has a life, a timeline; a past and a future; childhood, youth, and adulthood. It consists of millions of moments, so it has plenty of time to become an accomplished individual. But it isn’t conscious. It isn’t really me. I can’t inhabit the story, only a razor-thin sliver of it. So why worry about what it does or doesn’t achieve?
I, the moment, can only aid the story through small acts. I can get out of bed. I can type the next sentence in my novel. I can keep helping the stranger in need, whom my past moment decided to approach. And, before I cease to exist, I can hope that future moments enjoy the fruits of my miniscule labor.
This brings me peace. Knowing that I’m such a small being, limited to a second of existence, hoping to be part of something greater. Sheltered from the big processes, it only does what feels right in the moment. One can’t put too much responsibility on such a creature.