Lately I have been considering the nature of experience. We live as an individual ego sharing a planet with billions of other individuals. But we can only exist at one point in Space/Time, that point being Here/Now. And time only moves one direction for us--relentlessly forward. There are literally billions of experiences we could have, but because of this spatial and temporal limitation we end up with only a small portion of what is possible. There is an opportunity cost to every decision we make and every action we take.
Some experiences we have no control over. A war overtakes our homeland. A hurricane hits. We are alive at a time when a great pandemic arrives.
Maybe we are born blind or deaf. Or an accident puts us in a wheelchair. That condition colors every aspect of our experience. Or, even smaller and subtler. We are born into a family with an older sibling that tortures us. Or we marry someone because it's expected and then fall in love with someone else.
I like to think of time running in a single rope, right up to this moment. At this very point in the time space continuum there is one rope of the past, but there are multiple strands going into the future.
They are limited in certain ways by the single rope of the past. For example, if a person who is part of your life died in that rope of the past, there is no future bound strand in which that person will be alive. But the future bound strands are varied in their outcomes.
But many experiences are ones we do choose. And choose we must. We can't do all the things or be all the places. If we stay home and read, we miss the party, which is only going to happen for a few hours at a particular point in Space/Time. If you are somewhere else at that moment you will have a different experience.
And as to the ones we choose, some choices are extremely important because they will color all of your mid-adult experiences. These are your career and your choice of partner. Or to not have a partner. Example: You are a college freshman and want to be an artist. But your older sister convinces you to study accounting instead. This decision will shape every aspect of your life experience until you turn fifty and have a small breakdown. You quit your job and buy paints. In the end you move to an art town. You will never get those years back. But because we live in the Here/Now it may not matter much.
Our emotions color our experiences but they are not the experience itself. Think of a beautiful day on the beach. You are having a romantic picnic. Now, the same scene, but you are fighting with a lover.
We tend to put our experiences into pairs--pain or pleasure. A loving exchange or a fight. Alone in the world or surrounded by friends. And some of these will last for a period of your life and color that time in your memory.
For experiences must, in the nature of things, become memories. And as we grow older, we live partially in these memories rather than in the Here/Now. It is a phenomenon that can't be helped. And it is usually the most visceral memories that keep inserting themselves. Maybe in is the act of giving birth or making love that keeps inserting itself into our mental landscape. Or, maybe, it is holding our dying mother or crashing into a tree. But we can control this, to some extent.
As I get older, I am visited more often by reminders of mortality. Personal experiences have an end date. Time and place unknown as of yet. I think of the full measure of my experiences. I have had enough good ones to dwell there in memory if I choose. And some regrets as do we all. I can still travel the world, but it will not be the same world as it would have been if I had done this in 1974. And I never experienced being a mother. This will not be possible now, no matter what I wish. I will also never celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary, were I to marry the love of my life tomorrow.
There is a large basket of both lived experience and missed opportunities. Plenty to sort through.
As I write this I have maybe 30 years left of the experience of being alive. If I live to be over 100, maybe 40 years. But I do not have 50 more years under any theory.
Of course there are things I regret. The other path was the right one in several instances. But there is nothing that can be done. So, the question becomes--how can I get the experiences I want in the Here/Now. Not the ones that are physically impossible, but the ones that are within reach.
We can't control many things about our existence. Not even every aspect of our experiences or our memories. But we can control some of it. The only chance at happiness is to be so here and now. Even if it must be done in a chair in the living room of the house I am in right now.
There are billions of these timelines as we live out our lives. And there are also collective lines as large collective events take place in the world. Then many smaller personal timelines come together to form history.
WHICH of the futures goes from strand to rope as it becomes manifest--is up to us. It is the choices we make. There is a story in which two people are having a conversation on New Year's Day. One asks "what do you think will happen in this new year?" The other says "I think there will be flowers". His friend asks "why?" "Because I planted flowers".
If we choose to plant good things in the Here/Now, then the strand of the future will become a timeline we can love. Even in these dark times, that is still true. And it has never been more important.