The past. The present. The future. You hold them like a thread, but what is a thread to a whole garment? Life is a dilemma between these three; what do you get hung up on, which do you prioritize? It brings you to the same place, the crazy person in the rain with a bowl trying to catch every falling rain drop. The past, a catalogue of your mistakes and little glories in chronological order. The future, the aroma of your neighbor’s sizzling choice of meats on a pan that makes you scowl at your plate of pale white ugali and dark green ‘sukuma’… not even a hint of tomatoes in it. The plate, sadly, that is your present. Your neighbor whets your appetite, project nyumba kumi starting tomorrow, you think. Tomorrow never comes, that’s the illusion of the future. It is always tomorrow.
That’s the future for you, me, all of us. It forces us to aspire, search, explore; the never attainable, ever elusive progress. History venerates the past, walking in the shoes of revolutionaries. It dissects and give meaning to deft actions that gave birth to revolutions, challenging establishments. “If the wheel was invented, why are we trying so hard to make a car float on air without wheels?” they pose. We stutter, they make a good point. Case closed. They forget that revolutionaries flung anchors with the ease of flinging a fishing line, but were interested in more than fish. They baited extraordinary creatures, brought new knowledge, and awed everyone with their gallant disobedience of what existed in the past. They made history and created a future for our past.
“Change has inherent virtue,” they say. No one likes still waters though they run deep. We like the ripples because they effect the opposite of staidness. We think unpredictability in our present is progress. Maybe it is, maybe it has the same effect as a treadmill, telling you the distance you could have covered had you been on a real path. The truth is, you were most likely burning calories in stasis. You don’t know this yet, probably never will. It is the illusion that makes us hope, understanding hope defines what our progress is. As long as you are happy, nothing is static. Even mercury in its viscosity moves in its molecular state, content in innate motion.
Yet we chase the future with the vigor of a dog chasing a car down the road; with no intention of getting in. It is utopia, a perfect existence which we desire but never get there. Does the future, rather, tomorrow exist. It always seems to be ahead. The essence of time is always in the here and now, the present. That plate of unappetizing green and white, a combat uniform for your biting hunger. No one postpones hunger, because its teeth are sharp and the pangs ask for flesh. So you are stuck, at being the man who can’t be moved or be the one that can’t be still. The sad irony is that those who pursue the car never get in when it stops, and those in the car rarely appreciate the motion forward. So we are stuck at the present.
So you stare at your uninspiring plate and remember days of futures past. Missed chances and opportunities, wrong choices and glaringly bad mistakes. Shadows and empty spaces, each a regret or a curious burning. Probably your neighbors once envied your aromas of choice meats while they too stared at their unappetizing plates. When the preoccupation on what could be and should be on your plate collides, a certain squalor befalls the plate at hand. The option of a cold coke (insert drink of choice) and/ or avocado to add flavor go out the window. In our lust for more than contentment, more than understanding, we forget the joys of simple pleasures. Friends, family, love, good food, good music, color, fresh air, smiles, laughter, tears, cries, hugs and belonging. In our quest for the best, the past and future find their utility nested in the present. The past seems deep, the present shallow, the future boundless.
Similarly, our goals and aspirations veil the importance of the present for the fulfillment of the future. We master skills, memorize books, sometimes both. With a bitter taste, you plough through the present and spit the earth that lodges in your agape mouth as you pant for a better tomorrow. You mine for it, digging deep and hard with the hope of striking gold or oil. You climb the mole hill, the ant hill, the mountain then start chasing peaks. Each new height colder than the last, each lonelier than before. The air hisses away at your numb face, telling you to stop but you don’t. Until death stops you in your quest for the tower of Babel. Throughout the quest for onward and upwards, the present slipped out the back door and you did not notice.
Something happens when you enjoy the here and now, the present. Enthusiasm and mastery of living and enjoying the moment has a certain aura that time and space can’t seem to touch. The mere enjoyment and participation in activity because it is worth doing in the moment, not caring what the past or future would have cripple you to do in that moment … that is the easiest and hardest thing to do. Like enjoying a good movie or book, as the plot unfolds. As the twists make you gasp, as the characters keep you on the edge, guessing and breathing hard. Forwarding such or flipping through pages would make the whole thing tasteless. When you are in the moment, everything falls away in a timeless void.
We value our ineptitude on the wrong scales; a child’s is understood and an adult’s is condemned. Riddled with doubt, you stumble and get upset at your subpar achievements. We say we are too young or too old to learn/ unlearn some things. In retrospect, you will never be the right age for anything; the past is accounted for and the future may never validate your dreams. Sit still, brave the plate of green and white, allow yourself to smell your neighbor’s food but enjoy yours. Who knows, you might be having exactly what you need.
donmu2ua 