2006-10-17

future-tense present

Time is just racing onwards and with barely a present-tense glance, I'm running too. School is just a downpour of reading and assignments and some presentations... And everything is packed with doing and producing. I'm feeling a little worn by the whole thing. It's to be expected I suppose. I'm even writing this at school, in the Uplink room off the (Jimmy) Buffeteria and I had to wait in a lineup to get a computer, and I think somebody is eating cake because I can smell its sweetness. On either side of me, there are people doing assignments and scrolling through pages of text readings, some with charts and graphs and tables of information, all laid out neatly in the standard academic type. Then there's the guy in the corner who is slumped against the wall watching soccer highlights and online skate videos. It's all research, of course. And no one looks to the right or left because that would be rude. So there's rows and rows of us, just sitting, staring intently at our screens, the buzz of fluorescent lights above, on all the exposed pipes and electrical cords snaking over the roof.

In the back of my mind I'm thinking about the Reflection Paper I have to write tonight, which won't be especially hard (I console myself), but will still take a couple hours to do. Two hours from now, I'll be sitting down in Storied Lives to talk about Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, and I'm sure it'll run in circles and I'll feel tremendously frustrated by the end of the three hours. And then there's half an hour from now, when I'll be meeting with one of my professors about the presentation that's coming up next Wednesday--just to say, is this okay, will that work for class? And I'm not even especially feeling the words I type just now, or even retrospectively savouring the breakfast I had with Steve this morning. Even walking to school, I couldn't roll in the now; I couldn't settle into the regular walk and just enjoy this transitory journey. My life is anticipation and planning; it's looking at the next thing that's happening and trying to play my cards right, trying to clear Wednesday night, or planning the paper that I'm confused about so I have something to say when I talk to my prof about it. The "will" and "should" are commanding all the attention and dragging me forwards. I'm living the present in future-tense.

So, let's see... The whole point of this thing, this existence, is simply to be. It's to pay attention to the present moment because there's something holy about this present moment. There is something sacred in slowing down, in the silence of a quiet soul. There needs to be some attention paid to the future, to what's coming next, but never at the expense of the present. I would think there needs to be a balance. And I wonder if the whole world is built in such a way as to be merely anticipatory, neglecting the present heartbeat, the current of now, and simply consumed with doing whatever needs to be done next. Or maybe there are seasons in life, and this is one of school stress and anticipation and production and soaking up learning... My mind runs on ahead of me, eager to consume itself, because the completion of the next thing to be done is one less thing that will need to be done. And maybe then I'll be able to relax and be.

Of course, it's all very well and good. The learning is a rushing flow that I'm happily tapping into, and it's hard not to be carried on ahead of myself. But, it's all very good to be in the flow. All things considered, the student's life is a pretty good life. I just don't have a moment--

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

chris, you've tickled my gray matter.

this may be unrelated (not that beginning a sentence with that phrase has every stopped someone from saying what comes next), but last year I read a short excerpt from Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy in my medieval philosophy class, which he wrote while in prison where he eventually died. in it he presented a solution to the problem of the apparent incompatibility between God's having foreknowledge of the future on one hand, and the existance of free will in human beings on the other - a tired old saggy philosophical question, I know (but come on, we all love it). his solution was that God sees all things in an "ever-present moment"...that is, just as we see certain things in our temporal present, "so he perceives all things in his eternal one", and "thus does not alter the proper nature of things", etc, etc. you'll have to read the text for the logic leading up to that. but it struck me how we (or I, at least) tend often to think of 'eternity' in my mind as some unending expanse of time, or space, or something big and impressive at least...something 'future'?. meanwhile, it seems it might simply be an ever-present moment, with no dwelling on past or anticipation for the future...that is, it is spoiled by nothing, there is no other tense, no time, just being...the truest savouring of the present. and then like you were saying, we seem who live in these "real" present moments in time, such a brief moment, really the only time in which we can act or will or change or do anything in our lives, we can't help but spend it in anticipation for the future - 'living the present in the future tense'.

to me it's like the image of God/Eternity, spit out and facing backwards. instead of eternity being big, it's small - a moment that simply 'is', a moment unspoiled with no before and after. it seems the eternal within in us, then, is perhaps just that desire to lock down that present moment that is sacred, holy...to 'be in the now'...but it's unattainable, aloof. seems backwards, is all. I thought we had the present down pretty good.

anyway, I'm not trying to steal your blog, you just made me think, even if non-sensically. good thing this is a rambling blog. anyway, thanks for the tickle, buddy. I admire your thoughts.

11:31 am  
Blogger Steve & Gillian said...

chris, it's interesting what you write cause lately i've been thinking lots about time. time continues to tick and we can never slow it down...i often feel like when i was born i was dumped into a rushing river that continues to gain momentum...and while we never really desire to speed it up (except maybe when we couldn't wait to turn 10 or when when sitting through an exteremely boring lecture on ethics) in some strange way it seems that we spend our entire lives doing just that. we always wish we had more time, we often regret having wasted our time (atleast i do), we live from one deadline to the next, and we portion out time daily, yet we rarely do anything which allows us to savour time. and if we happen to get some spare time we watch tv (which i've found to be the closest thing to a time machine that's ever been invented, and not in a good way), worry about something, or find some other useless activity to fritter our time away. and an even bigger shame is that we're so damn busy prioritizing things that we never actually get to do the things we really want to because we're too busy with the 'shoulds' and the 'wills', as you say. basically, being stuck in time turns out to be a bit of a curse...after all, death is inevitable (which is interesting because in order for God to become human Jesus had to step into time; assuming that God lives free from its constraints normally). i'm pretty certain it was c.s. lewis who mused that perhaps human souls were not designed to live 'in' time, with all its stressors, but were designed to live 'outside' of it. maybe this will be one of the luxuries of heaven...

7:43 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tom Mulhern, I couldn't have said it better myself. Just be thankful and watch soccer highlights. Do you guys want to meet in a random, neutral, and equidistant location for a coffee? What would that location be? I'm up for it.

12:47 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, by the way, I was just listening to Patti Griffin. Smooth.

12:53 am  

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