The Weight of Time

I was browsing through Facebook the other day, playing with the timeline control. I went back a few years and was struck by what I saw. I remember doing all the things in the photos but they seemed... I don't know... foreign. I remember writing the status updates but it didn't seem like my words. The people were familiar but quite a few had disappeared from my life. I knew that my life took a radical change three years ago but this was something else. I hadn't thought about those memories in years,  these were the events that at the time were important enough to me to bother posting and I had hardly thought about them since.

I thought about my little exercise that night as I was going to sleep... what about all the things that didn't make it on Facebook (almost everything ) all the family time, private moments, days worked, things I read, the vast majority of my life that happened before Facebook was there to help document it. I thought about all the things that happened to me that relatively uninteresting day. Then I thought about the other 7ish billion people who also had lived a day that day. More than 19 million person/years of memories. EVERY SINGLE DAY.  The weight of time staggered me.

Where did all those experiences go. Mine were mine, right? I thought about the foreignness the Facebook memories had for me. I don't live there anymore, I thought, that was what made them foreign. They were like the house I grew up in that my parents have since sold. I drove by it once and barely recognized it. I didn't live there anymore and hadn't thought about the details of the house in years. The house was part of my past, and like the rest of my past served to get me where I do live...  right here right now.

So what about all that past, how is it relevant? The past I thought is like the ground we stand (or roll) on. Like the ground you have to be mindful of the past or you might end up hurt or somewhere you don't want to be. The sum of all pasts got us where we are.  The past can and should guide the now but we shouldn't allow ourselves to be trapped by it.

At this point you're probably a bit tired of my amateur philosophizing and wondering how all this relates my life with ALS.   If you've made it this far here's your payoff. As I had these thoughts a realization came over me... how small my current now is compared to what I am used to. I had to remind myself that "I don't live there anymore." "What does it mean to be living in a now dominated by ALS? " I wondered. It kinda sucks. Epicly. I could have offered myself a platitude like"make the most of what you've got" but it seemed kind of hollow. Then I realized THIS is where I live now. Platitude it may be but what the hell else am I going to do. All anyone can do is try and make themselves and those around them as satisfied with life as they can right now with a bit of the future in mind. Notice I did not say "happy" and I downplayed the future. My current situation has given me a new perspective on happiness and the future. Happiness is a moment, it flits away unexpectedly and comes back the same way. You can and should chase it but just remember it is fickle. Satisfaction is more permanent. That leaves the future...  another fickle friend. Don't give up too much of your now for it either. You never know what it holds even with the best laid plans.