Why can't we grasp a moment when we're >in< it?
Even when you make it a practice to just be “in the moment,” you can’t get your hands around it.
It's one of the great curses of human perception that we don't notice how special a time period feels until we're out if it, until we’re looking back and yearning for it once it's already slipped out of our fingers…
Recently, I came across a photograph taken during the early/mid-’90s of an intersection in the city I live in. I was flooded with a bittersweet feeling. The scene looked so warm and quaint. “This is so strange,” I thought to myself, “because I don’t remember it ever looking like that.” During that period, I’d walked past that intersection countless times and yet I don’t remember the ambience feeling so immersive. And I had no way of knowing that 30 years into the future I’d be looking back with a sense that I’d give anything to soak-in those same visuals again. Of course, how could I know?
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It’s a riddle, because even when you make it a practice to just be “in the moment,” you can’t grasp the moment. Even a month or so later, it can take on a hue that it just didn’t have in real time. I distinctly remember feeling that way just a month into college. The first few days, everyone seemed so much more open to social interactions with just about anyone because we were all finding our footing; a month into it, people’s social spheres were pretty well defined. So in just a matter of weeks, that earlier period took-on a kind of golden light in my memory, and I found myself wishing I’d been able to anticipate how more charged with significance those interactions would feel later. But again, how could I have?
I have much to say about this, but it’s a good one to reflect on, a kind of endless riddle that has so many implications for, well, everything!
<3 SRK