When I attempt to remember who I was when I was young, I cannot. I suppose this is because who I was then is the building blocks for who I am now and in an effort to separate the two all I discover is someone who is not complete within herself. So I must conclude that trying to remember the past is a task of realizing the present.
I do not know what it is like for others, but for me a moment is fleeting, yet essential to the definition of time and humanity. In one moment thousands of people can parish, while in that same moment an unbreakable love can be born. But are these really moments, or are we forgetting the great strands of moments that brought us to this particular telling event? My birth was preceeded by moments in which my parents made a commitment to eachother, whether it was love no will know. The foundation of America is remembered in a single moment, July 4th, when in reality its creation took countless moments of suffering, discrimination, joy, and freedom to expand intellectually. Maybe the complexity of any given moment is too much to comprehend, or maybe we edit out the intricacies because of our increasing need to move forward in a fast-paced and unforgiving world. Whatever the reason, we have failed to recognize the tradegy, the beauty and the seriousness of the moments we live. Why are we, our country, our standard of living the way they are today? Why are we able to gloat a powerful economy, even in the midst of an economic disaster, while people around the world are unable to realize thier potential within the global hierarchy?
I could go further, but perhaps dwelling on the moments and on the great vines of experience is just as detrimental as forgetting them all together. Maybe the answer lies in a balance of the moment and its precedsors. Maybe the only way to learn from the past is to have one foot in the creation of the moment, while the other stands firmly in the moment and its consequence. This is something I have learned in my life, my education, and in the contemplation of my moments: true and relevant solutions and answers are increasingly impossible to realize.
It could be that we as a world, or even a small but determined group of individuals, are looking to change the ways that inequalities are woven into the lives of huge numbers of peopel residing on planet earth. The thought of this makes my current moment humm with happiness, but then I consider the issue of context and time. History is edited, history is typically seen through the lens of a man, sometimes a woman, and until recently an Anglo-man. Because the roots of our current predicament can only be found steeping in the pails of the past, it is here that we look to define, redefine and provide solutions for the issues that plague us in the present. Thus it can be concluded, that until recently (and some would argue it continues today) the mine from which we dug for answers, suggestions and solutions was provided by a small minority of the world: white men and thier view of the world and thier perception of cultural and social stability and change. Examples of this can be found in so many aspects of our society, such as capitalism, treatment (in this case, dominance) of the environment, and the superiority of the white human over any other homosapien.
So a moment is not only a brief flash of time in ones existence. A moment is defined by all the moments that came before it and the magnitude of all those moments combined into a stream of conscious thought can be very intimidating. I will dedicate this blog to moments: personal moments, collective moments, moments of great sadness and moments that deserve massive celebrations. I will try to do my best bylooking not only at the moment but at the history of that moment through the guise of a biased history. I will attempt to be objective, but interestingly objectivity is subjective.
