The Myth of a Moment (And How the Written Word Can Make It Real)

You hear it all the time.  Behavioral experts, motivational speakers, philosophers, life coaches . . . “Live in the moment.  Stay in the now.  The moment we’re in is all we have.”  Fair enough . . . on the surface of it.  But when you take a step back and really look at it . . . what does this mean?  And what, in fact, is a moment, anyway?

 

Is a moment the single second we are living in, the instant in time that is “now”?  If so, it is over and done so quickly, before we can “live it,” it is gone.  For example, if you and I were standing in line, waiting for an ice cream cone, and I said to you, “How’s your day?”  What is the “moment”?  By the time you hear those words, the “moment” is over.  Maybe your response–“Great, how’s yours?”–is the moment?  But that, too, is finished before I have time to think about it or even respond to it.

 

Is the “moment” the entirety of the conversation?  Maybe.  And if the exchange is limited to a few passing pleasantries, perhaps this is as valid a definition as any.  But what if the conversation lingers and persists for five minutes?  Ten?  A half hour?  An hour?  (It’s a LONG line!)  Then what?  Is the “moment” the full hour?  Or is it broken into individual seconds, each too swift to grasp?  Individual minutes, maybe?  What chunk of time do we label “a moment”?

Additionally, do we remember our moments?  If they come and go with the blink of an eye, if we can’t even fully experience them when they happen (by the time our brain processes them, they are already in the past), how on earth do we remember them after the fact?  Obviously, we remember big things, certain memories and events that stand above the fray, things we carry in our hearts like buried treasure for the entirety of our lives.

 

But think about it.  Over 99 percent of our “moments” are gone from our conscious minds, erased, as if they never happened.  Now, I believe they are still inside us–at a deep, subconscious level.  But, short of dreams or perhaps hypnosis, they are inaccessible, tantalizing but unable to be grasped.  Trying to recall the vast majority of moments even from yesterday, let alone last year or ten years ago, is like attempting to hug the wind or encase an aroma in your hands.  It cannot be done.

So, where does that leave us?  Can we really “experience the moment,” after all?  We compensate in a holistic way.  I can’t remember what I did yesterday at precisely 9:04 a.m.  But I can remember what I did, in general, yesterday morning.  I can’t remember what my brother did on December 1, 2007.  But I have a collection of memories of my brother, culled and collected over time, that define my experiences with him.  In short, our memories, our moments, even the people we love, become composites, a vast collection of individual experiences brought together, coalescing in a formed and layered collage, like a building continually being added onto, story by story, row by row.

December 2007 calendar

 

It is often frustrating–this inability to step back within the eye blink of a moment, the limitations of our conscious memory, which forget the vast majority of the moments of our lives.  We do the best we can with what we have.

But there is something that fleshes out moments, that pours concrete under the foundation of events and experiences.  And that is the written word.

Indeed.  What’s your favorite novel?  To Kill a Mockingbird?  Wuthering Heights?  The Shining?  Maybe you’ve read it a dozen times.  You know the story well, inside and out.  But can you, from memory, quote the fifth sentence on page 138?  Of course not.  Like a “moment,” it is gone–experienced once (or several times), but no longer a part of your conscious memory.  With a novel, though, with anything written and preserved on the page, you can check.  You can go back.  You can turn to page 138, and you can relive that moment, and you can reread that sentence!  You don’t have to combine disparate words and chapters into a blended whole.  You can go granular, and experience individual sentences again, and again, and again, if you so choose.

 

That is the magic of the written word.  It makes things permanent.  It takes a fleeting moment, a scene, a paragraph, a sentence, and it tattoos it to the page, forever accessible, forever able to be read, and experienced, again.

Magic, indeed.

So . . . you want to live in the moment?  Remember moments from the past, with crystal clarity?  Then grab a book . . . and read.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike