I’m living in a past-present where everyday seems to be dictated by what has come before me. What I do tomorrow. What I have done. I must find a future that encompasses both.
Yet that future is always at arms-length, never quite within my reach. It waits for me to inquire about it. In fact, it exists only in this inquiry. The question of whether it will ever be keeps it alive.
My present, then, works backwards. It asks what once happened to find what might be. It never truly is present for it constantly passes me by. It exists only in memories.
Perhaps, then, the past is ‘Me’. An aggregate of hopes that have gone and only return in these memories. My desires are made of what was, what might be and what is - where was and is are one in the same. My past constructs a present that I do not live in, but rather, lived in. There is no ‘Me’ in the now.
Thus, if my past is my present then it is all I will ever be. When I am long gone I will no longer feel the future just almost in my grip. All that will be left and all there has ever been of me is a memory of memories that once filled my head. ‘Me’ is always a past, always a creation, always a performance embedded into some thinking that upon entry to existence becomes thought.
If my past is my present I must live now and then. I move forward only by looking back at the good, the bad and the ugly. To live in a past-present is to create a future that you will never see and a past that is at least slightly better than it last was.
