What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever? What a question! There’s nothing I like enough to see or feel or taste or experience forever. Sounds like a hell to me.
It makes me wonder, though — if we were locked into a single moment, would we even notice? I mean, when you think about it, we live in our minds, in our memories. The only thing that distinguishes one moment from another is the memory of what has gone before and the forward memory of what will come after (because except in rare cases of accidents and instantaneous body breakdowns, we can almost be assured that the moment after this one will be almost identical to this one). Without a memory of the past and without a forward “memory” of what is to come, the isolated moment we’d live in might as well be frozen forever because we wouldn’t know the difference.
It is interesting to think how the moment preceding this one and the moment following are almost identical except perhaps for an indiscernible change, and yet those indiscernible changes add up to be significant changes over time.
If I were to expand the question from a moment to longer period of time that I absolutely had to freeze and live in forever, I imagine a couple of mornings ago before winter returned would be as good as any. It was perfect weather: not too warm, not too cool, no wind. The flowers were blooming cheerily, the greenery jewel bright. I was feeling good — no aches or pains — and able to bend to pick weeds without any trouble. The neighborhood was quiet, no loud noises — just the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and the sound of an indrawn breath or two when I did too much weed-pulling. I was living totally in the moment — or rather, in that series of moments — with no thoughts of anything but me in my garden. Me as part of the garden.
Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Always to be pain-free, always in perfect weather, never hungry or thirsty.
But even perfection palls. I could have been outside longer than I was, but I got thirsty, tired, even (dare I say it?) bored.
Of course, in that frozen forever time, none of those hampering sensations would have happened, but still, stasis is never a desirable objective. We are dynamic beings, always on the move, even if we are frozen in place. The earth hurtles around the sun at 67,000 mph. The sun hurtles around the galaxy at 140 miles per second. The entire universe is also moving and expanding, so from one second to the next we are in a completely different place with a possibility of different factors.
And so things change, will I, nill I.
Still, I do have to admit, that was a lovely morning, frozen in memory if not in time.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
Bertram's Blog 