Meadow No. 3 ~ Fall 2009
There is seldom any rational reason for having regrets about past deeds or events. Because the past does not exist in any way other than in your memory.
Paul Wilson
Human beings are a solitary/social species. We can only exist in the moment in which we exist and, because we are centered in the moment of existence even when in a crowded room, we experience that moment alone, always already isolated in the universe we perceive. The solitary appears to give way to the social when there are shared experiences. At a ball park when a home run is hit the crowd responds as one, each participant having experienced that home run from a slightly different perspective. But the experience of perception is, and always shall be, a solitary moment of experience.
But what remains after the experience? Only a trace of memory, a remembered continuum of the lived experience. This memory is ever degrading as experienced time passes. Remembrances become less clear, more untroubled, acceptable with the passage of experienced time. Good times get better and bad times seem less horrific than they seemed at the time of experience.
Even the recorded past, that which some might call history, is a narrative of justification; making actions, justified or not, ethical or not, moral or not, appear appropriate. The narrative of history, written by winners, is replete with justification while denying contrary fact. In short, the history told is a story designed to bolster the memory of those disseminating the story, a collective memory perceived differently by each reader and populations othered by the narrative.
What counts, the only thing that counts, is the isolated momentary contact with the infinite as one experiences the unmeasurable moment of time that is already gone even when the moment is shared with one or more people. All that remains is the simulacrum of the moment; the memory of that encounter. Townes Van Zandt wrote: Days up and down they come, like rain on a conga drum, forget most, remember some, but don’t throw none away. Don’t forget the past but harbor no regrets either. Savor the moment as if it were your last.
The Meadow No. 3 ~ Fall 2009 by Roger Passman, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
