I was looking at an apparently homeless dog yesterday, in a run down part of town. He seemed to be looking for food. And I thought: he lives in a perennial present. He will live in this perennial present until the day he dies. He will have latent memories of past people and places, but no active ones.
And life as a homeless dog likely has ups and downs. When he finds a good stash of good food, he eats his fill then takes a nap. When he is hungry or mistreated, he growls and is anxious.
And I thought to myself what it would be like to “lose” my future and my past. I myself cling to my present through superstructures in my mind linking the past and–as an emotional extrapolation of the present–the future. You can predict you own emotional future if you are very sure you will never change.
And there are metastructures: for example, the content of my thought might change, but not the ubiquity of it. I think many intellectuals and thought workers find this hard to let go of. I know I do.
But being a log, washed up and down by the sea: that is an odd image, and a hard thing to imagine emotionally.
I’m trying to engage with this time, and my own time on Earth. I am trying to enter it perceptually, to live on the inside of the moment. It is hard. Most worthwhile things are.
These are today’s musings on this topic.