“If living life is an active choice, then experience is its fuel,
and there is no other time to experience one's life than now.”
At the time of writing, the holidays are right around
the corner. Everybody is looking forward to Christmas
and excited for the prospects of the New Year. We are
always eager with thoughts of new beginnings, about
leaving the unsavory things in the past and starting anew.
But this is only because we see time as a series of
linear events. One event after another, and then another,
and then another, and then the end.
When one particular event is traumatic and painful,
we tend to want to move onto the next. We fast forward,
struggling to shake it off, until the series of (unfortunate)
events are behind us; too far away down the line for us to
see, or remember.
When we see time as linear, or a chain, it’s easy to see
running from our problems or keeping them out of sight
as a viable solution. We bury our struggles more and
more, we forget about it and hopefully it solves itself.
What if we saw time differently? What if we saw
time in a way that forced us to be responsible for every
moment that came to us?
What if time wasn’t linear?
This was exactly how French philosopher Emmanuel
Levinas thought.
Levinas saw something fundamentally unique about
how we view time and how we experience it. We look
back to the past in somber nostalgia or recollection, and
we anticipate the future with great expectation.
We forget that we do both contemplations in
the here and the now. We often forget the present in
reverence of the past and in fear of the future. This
paralyzes us because in the present, we feel helpless
that we cannot affect time that has passed and we are
uncertain about the future.
However, Levinas reminds us that our experience
is not confined to neither the past or future; it is here, it
is now. If living life is an active choice, then experience
is its fuel, and there is no other time to experience one's
life than now. To experience is an action. While it is
contained in the past, it is frozen and cannot be affected.
The opposite is true for the future, where experience is a
total void.
We must remember that our opportunity to
experience life is always fleeting because the opportunity
disappears almost as soon as it arrives.
The loveliest analogy Levinas gives us is that our present
is a heartbeat, a pulse. It is constant only as long as you are
living. Every pulse is a call to live, decide, and act. This is
the heartbeat of your existence; it is ever present. Of course,
he is not proposing to forget the past and race to the future.
Consider it a call to action. The time to reflect on the past is
now; the time to prepare for the future is now. This allows
us to escape the paralysis of regret and fear by simply acting
because every pulse is a new beginning. Simply put, he is
telling us not to wait and not to wallow.
So dear reader, I'd like to thank you for sharing a
pulse of your present with me. At the end, a new pulse
emerges. Take what you’ve read, and ask yourself “what
will you begin?"
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