Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Living in the Moment

People often say that one should "live in the moment," that this is a healthy and appropriate way to approach life. I presume what they mean is that one should neither dwell on the past nor obsess about the future, and to this degree they are correct. But as I find myself living more and more in the present, I'm not sure it's entirely for the best.

I find the future, even the near future, to be confusing and terrifying. I can't see any inviting path from the present to the future, and have no clear idea what my future looks like. That's frightening. As for the past, I've committed so many sins, and had so many sins visited upon me by others, that even a cursory backwards glance fills me with a mixture or regret and rage and leaves me profoundly sad. I'm sure that if I could come to terms with my past, it would help me face my future, and I hope to be able to do that soon. But in the meantime, my pain avoidance technique is to stay firmly fixed on the here and now.

Maybe that explains why I cherish my movie time each evening. Watching a DVD is completely an "in the moment" experience; if the film is any good, I get absorbed in it and consequently forget about my own life for the duration. What is more, getting wrapped up in a good story lets me move freely into the pasts and futures of the characters on the screen, something I can't do for myself. Because the sadness, anxiety, or rage I encounter on these trips belongs to the characters and not to me, I don't internalize them and instead can view them from a detatched, rational perspective. I frequently find myself advising the characters--"can't you see that's not going to work?" "You should do this and stop doing that"--and when I suddenly realize that I'm advising myself as much as them, I immediately shut down that line of thinking and re-focus on the movie.

I'm taking other small steps beyond movie-watching to make my "now" a place of comfort and confidence; my trips to Harbin add to this, I'm trying to get taken on as a volunteer with the local symphony, and will start taking T'ai Chi lessons next week. Even having Reggie T. around makes me feel a little better right now. I figure that if I can make "today" a reliably positive experience, I can work on expanding "today" little by little into yesterday and tomorrow and thus rehabilitate my whole lifeline.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Submitted Without Comment

...except to point out that all four of the profilees have a partner who provides some measure of financial and emotional support.

Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On (Michael Luo, The New York Times, Sept. 7 2009, page A1)