Experience

The persistent drone of an idle air conditioner; the dull sensation of contact between skin and garment; the unwavering image of a laptop amid a backdrop of knick-knacks and corkboards—experiences I am having in this moment, and this one, and probably the next. 

Experiences aren’t acute. There is no start or end point to a moment. Neuroscientists postulate that our brains register events separated by less than 30 milliseconds as simultaneous—but this isn’t how we experience life. We blend minutes, hours, and days together. Simultaneity is a useful scientific concept, but it’s not our phenomenology.

Our memories play an active role in what we experience. If there is no commencement of an event, then we are constantly drawing from past ones to make sense of the current. Like a Rube Goldberg machine, the present triggers a complex series of neural interactions that allow us to experience, and operate in, the world. 

But, unlike a Goldberg machine, there is no single trigger point. The present is like a marble rolling over infinitesimally small triggers—impossible to pinpoint because they bleed so seamlessly into what is past and what is future.

Equally disturbing is the unreliable nature of the machine itself. We remember what fits into the narrative we have already so laboriously revised over years of existence. Memories are worked and reworked to fit the storyline. Our misremembrances become part of our present, which becomes part of our memory, and so it compounds.

Aside from objective events, who is to say what truly occurred? No one can refute your experience. What you are experiencing “now” will certainly be different from what you remember experiencing tomorrow. Both can be right.

As far as I can tell, there is an end to every story. Every being will eventually write their final word. But like any good story, we derive the most pleasure from the reading, the hearing, and the telling. The last sentence makes up only a small fraction of the book. Why, then, do we so heavily associate our identity with our most current mental model? If we do so now, we will certainly do so on our deathbeds.

We shouldn’t judge the quality of our lives based on our most recent experience. We should swim blissfully through time—with less regard for the river, and a greater attention to its flow.