Thursday, January 14, 2010

Past, Present, Future

No, as far as these things are concerned, there is just today, beautiful, perfectly, joyfully, tragically unfolding, however it may.  Everything else - yesterday, tomorrow - is simply a story we tell ourselves.  They are powerful stories, to be certain, stories which inform our choices and our emotion and awareness, but really the only thing that truly exists is this moment we've been given. 

From my journal Monday 5 October 2009. 

The end of that journal got really spastic.  As in, of the last five entries, I wrote the word UGH at least eight times.  The final entry even consisted of only that single word, 31 December 2009: UGH, and then nothing else for the rest of the book.  I had to move on to the next notebook with seven blank pages remaining, just because I needed a fresh start (and what a coincidence it aligned perfectly with the calendar year this time!).  Anyway, though, I was looking back through for something profound that somebody had said that I thought I'd recorded, but I didn't find the profound statement.  Instead I came across the above little nugget, which is also profound, in its way.  It is nice to go back and re-read and surprise yourself that maybe you can sometimes write things that are a little bit wise or beautiful, even if you have pages and pages filled with UGH UGH UGH in large childish scrawl. 

Like Ju-Ju Pup always has at the bottom of her emails, that uniquely human marriage of the infinite and the mundane within each of us...

5 comments:

Wiglaf said...

Well, I'm pretty sure the past does exist, but I see what you mean. In all the wide Universe, one's consciousness sits at a tiny fuzzy point in space-time — augmented a little by historical records or pen-pals or whatever, but essentially cut off from the Whole, with only its immediate surroundings available to try and acquire knowledge from.

Katie said...

Interesting! I hadn't thought of it in terms of a larger historical context...

n said...

Journal entries is one of the best ways to construct your own narrative. Your own story of events helps you decipher what happen or, perhaps, see the events in a different light. Consciousness is one of the greatest mysterious of humanity. And having the ability, through language, to be able to jot it down and read it, is awe inspiring.
There is much discussion of what make you. I mean your mind and how it works. And that language may also influence your perception. Everyone sees the world through their own prism of perception, but what is reality or the objective reality?
There will always be a mystery, some problem we cannot solve because of human limitations.

coolboy said...

hi i have quote for ur post

yesterday is sad,tomorrow is suspense, today is gift

i think it sounds good

Katie said...

Thank you n and naveen!

Another thought I was just considering (sort of in light of Logan's comment) is that the past may continue to impact us, but the way we frame that story tells us about our current selves more than it necessarily tells us about the past.