The Past Is Dead
A part of us likes to hold on to the past, to record life, mostly to be prepared and better equipped for the future. But life is uncertain and there is no way of knowing how the future unfolds. Tomorrow might bring something, and the day after, something else.
Most respond to this vulnerability with fear rather than excitement, and thus begins a process of theorizing how life works. We then begin to experience events not as they are, but as clues for what might come next, as data to be added to a pool of information engineered to keep us safe from life's uncertainty.
This process is so recurring that one could call it as natural as breathing. A process of gathering information to understand life better. To not live life, but collect it.
A bigger problem arises when deviation from one's understanding of life is responded to with fear and anger, rather than curiosity and wonder. When being proven wrong becomes a moment of shame and embarrassment, not enlightenment. 'How could that happen? How could I be wrong? Maybe the world is wrong. Maybe that did not happen to begin with.'
With this, we dwindle down a path of denial and egotism, where we make conscious/subconscious efforts to force life to adhere to our understanding, to superimpose our theories on the dynamic nature of existence. Pleasure is felt when our theories are proven right, and anything that could render it false is seen as threat. Everything out of line with it is pushed out of our trajectory.
As we time passes, we become frail and old and wonder why nobody wants our precious advice. The advice which is a fruit of our sacrifice, which was supposed to give us a taste sweeter than that of the ignored present. No glory is felt. All that remains is a brittle hope that this fruit tastes sweet to someone else, so our sacrifice is validated and we get closure.