Thoughts 28.9.23

Round two, I guess. I don't really have anything to talk about and nothing is bothering me at the moment. So I will just write down some thoughts I have been thinking (or thoughts I am currently thinking - how exciting!).

Firstly it is so hard to come to terms with how time works. I can remember events that happened years ago with perfect detail, as if I were experiencing those things right now. This makes the past feel infinitely small, which it is. It exists in our memories but it does not exist outside of that. It was once a real time but is now nonexistant. Practically speaking, a million years ago is as far away as three seconds is.

Then there is the future, the opposite of that. Although I can rationally predict how far an hour into the future is, it is in fact infinitely far away. I am reasonably sure that it will come, but for the time being it is as far away from me in the present as twenty years is from me in the present. It's just a matter of which comes first.

And that leaves the present. Everything. The present is everything. Nothing exists outside of the present and our only way out of it is through reminiscing about the past or fantasising about the future. All the money in the world tomorrow is worth less than five dollars today. Vladimir Nabakov wrote something like this in his most (in-)famous book Lolita (which is a good book, although the subject matter is very sensitive). Humbert Humbert must escape the concerns of the psychiatric establishment so that he can begin tracking down his escaped lover, and in order to do so must set down his emotions, despite how much they burn him, saying, "Freedom for the moment is everything." And indeed it is, nothing in the future or the past is worth as much as the present (I think).

bdof