Time slices
The question: is that a noun with a descriptive adjective, or a verb with a subject?
From a conversation between Francis W. Porretto and Duyen Ky:
[T]his is the way our minds work: we remember our past, we hope for our future, but we squeeze all our actual living in between them. A healthy person does all three, with emphasis on the present. The people to beware are the part-people, the ones who get so stuck on the past or are so anxious about the future that they simply can’t live in the now. They have a lot in common with any other kind of fanatic you might name: one dimensional lives, obsessive personalities, immunity to reason and reassurance, a resistance to love and joy.
I’m not quite one-dimensional, but lately I feel as though I have a lot more width than I do length or depth.
I think I’m dwelling less on the past than I used to, though I’m inclined to attribute this less to the getting of wisdom than to simple distance: the past seems farther away than it used to. (Then again, I’ve never been this old before.) The phrase that trips me up, though, is “immunity to reassurance”; if you tell me everything’s going to be all right, there’s almost no chance I’m going to believe you. Whatever is going on, I must see it through.
So maybe I’m not living in the now, but in the fifteen minutes ago. I suppose this is all right, so long as I don’t catch a glimpse of Andy Warhol out of the corner of my eye. Unfortunately, my peripheral vision is indifferent at best.
Jeffro »
29 November 2009 · 12:34 pm
Most of your introspectives really resonate with me – “immunity to reassurance.” Experience? Pessimism? Realism? All of the above? Does it matter? The results are the same – I don’t trust unbridled optimism either.
Have we put our lives on time delay in order to pass judgment on a situation more accurately? To see how it starts to unfold – and at least sense a familiar pattern? Fascinating, to steal a quote. Does that make me a part-person? That apparently requires a major commitment to obsessiveness and fanaticism – something that requires more effort than I’m willing to give.
Good brain food for a Sunday afternoon, Chaz.
McGehee »
29 November 2009 · 10:45 pm
To me “immunity to reassurance” implies an awareness that the reassurer doesn’t know any better than I do what’s going to happen.
Perfectly healthy thing, I’d say.
McGehee »
29 November 2009 · 10:47 pm
…especially since it also implies its inverse, immunity to despair-mongering.
Of course, to good old homemade despair maybe not so much with the immunity.