The Unreality of Past: Do we need it? Would we “get old” without it?
I’m not quite thirty, but I think I’ve just gotten a taste of the mechanism that causes mid-life crises.
It’s been causing something similar in me…the typical bouts of depression and DPD that I have to be vigilant about if I don’t want to end up on medication have been tinted with something else lately, like a spoilage that makes you gag on something you were used to getting down in spite of its taste. Like a swirl of vomit in your whisky.
Like many people described as “having depression”*, I’ve always been sensitive to ups and downs. As part of my now ten-year ongoing quest to coexist with my psychology** without the help of some of the most evil corporations in the world (‘cuz letting Pfizer manage your brain is like letting McDonald’s manage your diet), I have to keep a really close eye on these things. If I hit a downslide and am not prepared to deal with it, or I don’t realize that what I’m feeling is chemically motivated, I could be in real trouble. Such is life; we all have our challenges.
*in my case, early onset dysthymic depression with major depressive episodes…here, have a DSM-IV. ;)
**I tend to use the word as a noun; really I mean “mental entity composed of all the things that psychology is concerned with”, but that’s just waaaaay too long. Somtimes I call it an “ego” too, but that’s missing some things.
But like I said: Swirl of vomit. That unexpected nastiness that’s knocking me off guard lately has to do with age, or more specifically with Past. Until even fairly recently, most things were new, be they good or bad. College, worklife, marriage, kid, divorce…I’m a neophile, so new is a good in itself for me; even things which are “bad” are less bad if they’re new…and things which are good are less good if they’re not new. But as one gets older, less things are new, and less component parts of things are new, so that even things which are new overall (i.e. getting a new job) become composed mostly of things you’ve done or experienced before. Work is just work; motherhood is a given; remarriage is painful in its familiarity; even busting tail to finish one’s degree gets stale after the fifth year of it. Changing jobs or boys or homes no longer shakes you out of your ennui. And it feels like getting old.
What this amounts to, I realized very recently, is an accumulation of Past. I capitalize the word because in the sense I refer to it, it is a proper noun, one cohesive thing, unbroken and undifferentiated. We all experience it as being filled with our various memories and thoughts, but it’s still the same thing — and what it is, at base, is unreal.
Take three deep breaths and run that thought over your brainwrinkles again: The Past isn’t real. It isn’t real in any way; it’s only a memory-trace of what was once real and no longer is, and an inaccurate, subjective memory-trace at that. There’s nothing real about it. Even the effects “it” has on your psychology and your experience of the present are only effects created by the psychology, for the psychology: there’s nothing anchoring them except habit. Like the Gregorian month, the sixty-second minute and “early-onset major depression”, the Past is only there because we think it is. In simple terms, it’s a “construct”.
The important question with constructs is always, are they helpful? I mean, yes, it’s good to be able to recall something that happened last week, and that takes Past; but for every instance of that, there seems to be a million instances of melancholy, bittersweet, unrealistic expectations, old pain, grudge, false layers of self, inappropriate reactions and misinterpretations of the Present, all caused by looking at things through the increasingly-dirty lenses of the Past.
Historically speaking, sure you can use the Past to learn something about the Future. But practically speaking, the Past can’t tell you a damn thing useful about the Present. All it can do is foul up your view. In my case, lately it’s been turning everything that ought to be pleasant into the taste of tears, either by dredging up old agonies that were never laid to rest (getting divorced, for instance, just buys you a suitcaseload of those, and there’s nothing you can do about it) — or by holding up the Now to the dying light of what’s gone and, now that I’m officially a grown-up, gone for good. Beautiful places are all the exploring I didn’t do; neat people are all the friends I never had; art I admire is tainted with the disappointment of dreams left unchased — everything that should be the same kind of good I experienced in my youth wears the shroud of what I didn’t do with that youth, now officially, irrevokably gone. Everything that happens now is drenched in the possibility of what it would have been if I hadn’t screwed up earlier.
Past and Future are really the same thing, of course. Past : regret :: Future : worry. And neither are real.
What all this means is that every moment of wonder I’ve had lately has been dipped in loss. Every hope has been part grief. Every event, no matter how insignificant, is potentially a revisitation of things I’m desperate not to have to think about anymore, now that they’re old and crusty enough that thinking won’t do anything to change them. They’re dead, ugly and beautiful alike, and if they’re not allowed to die, they’ll haunt me until I’m just as haggard and miserable as the rest of the grown-ups.
The answer seems to be to jettison the Past completely from one’s thoughts, except when it’s absolutely needed for a practical reason.
Of course, one can’t think in negative terms — if you disagree, try having “not thinking about elephants” as a goal for the next couple weeks — so what needs to be done is that same old schtick, of focusing attention on the Present. “Being in the Now” is the quintessential “easier said than done” activity, however, so it’s helpful to have an anchor in place, a flag you can watch for, and the taint of the Past, now that I know what it tastes like, should be a good one.
I just need to reprogram the ol’ software with a “IF PAST, GOTO PRESENT” command.
If you sit, like I did, and think for a moment about how the heck you would actually do that, you’ll quickly realize that it looks like a hella big job. However, I have an advantage, in the form of a hypnogogic substance that I was planning on trying this weekend anyway…salvia is meant for enhancing meditation, and meditation is a generally solid tool for sinking modifications deeper into the psychology than simple declarations can. So that’s my plan: Use the salvia trip(s) this weekend (they’re very short, 1 hour or less, so there may be more than one if I don’t get it right at first) to firm up the detachment from Past and work it far enough into my brain that it doesn’t easily get overwhelmed. (If salvia doesn’t work for this — it may not — then I’ll just have to get a bit more serious about my methods. Anybody read Dr. Leary? He had a record of success with neurologic programming that has yet to be matched, except by the Ketamine-depression treatments I wrote about previously.)
Which means I’d better get started dreaming up some exercises or meditations to that end, huh? My brain can be a tough customer, but it responds well to metaphor, thankfully.
One last thing: Do you ever wonder what you’d do, what you’d be like, if you really figured out all the screwups in your head? (I gather that a many people think such self-correction is impossible, but of course I know for a fact that it is possible, just tricky.) It stands to reason that you’d still be you — you without all the baggage that isn’t really you; Pure You I suppose — but what kind of resemblance would that bear to you, now? Would you be able to enjoy what you used to, have the relationships you do now, etc.? How much of “you” is psychological fuckup? …Not a question that can be answered, I realize, but still I can’t help asking it now and again.
-PD
5 comments
I am an inveterate lurker. I have never left a comment on any of the several sites/blogs that I try to read faithfully. This site, though, is, to me, an anomaly.
Two quick points:
1. -PD: I understand your anguish when you consider the past, but, in some sense, isn’t awareness of the past akin to “consciousness”? One could not read if one did not remember words just viewed. One could not understand conversation if one did not remember, at least for an instant, syllables just heard. One could not function visually, if every glance were filled with information completely new to the viewer. Without memory, without the past, wouldn’t consciousness be reduced to a hum?
Now, if past and memory are somehow part of consciousness, it wouldn’t necessarily follow, but, it might very likely follow that the more aware of the past one is, the more conscious one is of the present?
As an inveterate lurker who has never before left a comment, I’ve run out of nerve before I bother with Number 2. Maybe, though, mulling over these simple thoughts will get you out of the funk you were in when you wrote this post.
rpwilt
Wow. An anomaly. I’m honored, really honestly I am. ;) Thank you for your comment, and for giving up your comment-virginity here!
And you make a good point (which is always good in commentary), which is answerable but not easily. Hope you like metaphysics, ‘cuz that’s where this is going.
I could give you a “brush off” answer of, “if it’s recent syllables and functional memory, then it’s necessary past, which I already said is a good thing” — and that’s true, but it doesn’t answer the deeper question you’re asking, and that deserves to be addressed. Arbitrarily qualifying some past as good and some as bad by its recentness and likeliness to cause depression is kinda cheap, anyway.
First, assume we grant that the “actual past” isn’t real; that it really is all inside our heads; that 1602 doesn’t “still exist” in some sense. (Believers in cyclical or simultaneous temporal reality might disagree with that, but from a standard observer-centric view, it’s true.)
Then you have two kinds of past being stored in your brain: The short-term kind, such as syllables and the points of a conversation or the recent paragraphs in a book you’re reading, or even the pages of that book you read last week, the memory of which allows you to follow the story — all of that is short-term, stored for functional reasons. It’s still Memory — a type of thought — and not actually the Past itself, any more than a videotape of a robbery is the actual robbery. But it’s certainly not harmful, and you’re right, if the brain didn’t do it we’d be pretty useless creatures. (Well…less useful anyway. Animals have varying degrees of this capability, and they function, but they certainly have much less of the mental experience of “a life” than we do.)
The other kind is long-term, and forms “the story of you”. It contains memories of things that happened to us, that we did, that we felt and thought and “were”, all in a quite subjective form that’s prone to change over time, but which accumulates steadily as the years go on. And it’s to these I hand the definition of “old”, because what’s really different between the mentality of a 40-year-old and a 20-year-old? Two decades of accumulated past stories, that’s what. And what good do they do us? They trap us in definitions, they feed us regret, they perpetuate illusions and project dead pain onto the pristine present, very often screwing up how we ought to react to or handle things in the now. And note how very deeply that collection of stories “is me” to many people…but like we just said, it’s memory, data-trace; it’s no more “you” than that videotaped robbery is a crime in progress. “You” are here, totally, encompassed 100% within Reality, in the Present. (Right? That’s sort of a requirement for being real, isn’t it? Existing in reality?) But as long as we’re thinking that some, most or all of us (depending on our age and outlook) “is” the Past, then what we’re acting through in this world is part fiction. I see that as a huge chunk of the source of disconnect that people feel with the world, and which causes so many addictions, illnesses and unhappiness.
What I want to put aside is the flippant telling and retelling of stories from childhood, with no point other than to chew them over so the juice is fresh for application to here and now, where such things don’t belong. I want to put aside the stupid identities we create for ourselves out of woven stories from the past, dead threads re-interpreted so that we have a “victim” or an “agressor” or some other built-up mental “self” here in the present, which isn’t us and never was us and does us nothing but disservice.
If we killed that accumulated past, put way more of our attention on the now and let go of memories that didn’t have real relevance or meaning (and the ones that did would, I’m sure, surface on their own when needed), made an effort to not wallow in old memories or build our identities out of dead things, can you imagine how much happier we’d be? How much younger the old person would feel? If all you’ve got to actually deal with is now, if everything else can be safely let go, how liberating would that be?
But most importantly, how funny is it that I sit here and mull through my thoughts like this, sifting the same trunk in the attic as everyone else except constantly asking, “How did this get here? Do I need to keep it? Why is it filed under ‘insecurity’?” and crap of that nature, rather than DOING the things I talk about? Why is it so hard to actually throw out these tattered old thoughts, and just live in the present, where things are (purportedly) so much easier? Well, my excuse is that my mind is soooo powerful that I just can’t override it, but that’s just the funk talking. Truth is, I’m just as completely lost as everybody, only perhaps a bit more upset about it. ;)
Thanks again for your comment, and seriously, I apologize a whole lot for writing a post that sounded depressing; that’s not my goal here at all, at all. Nothing worse than a depressing blog. I’ll do better in the future, eh? Oh, wait…there is no future. Damn.
;)
-PD
PD:
Guess I’m beginning to understand your metaphysics.
The past is just a construct. It’s in my mind. After all it’s kind of hard to put your hand on the year 1620.
Gotcha.
Two types of past – Short term and Long term. Short term is necessary to function. It allows me to be aware of the immediate past so that I can read, converse, and think coherently. Long term is “old” and constantly badgers us with thoughts of wronging others and being wronged. If we could free ourselves from long term past/memory we could live so much more happily.
Gotcha. Wasn’t that hard – your metaphysics.
Wondering though. Let’s see… if I remember right you have a little one about three years old. I’m willing to bet that at some point you have played a simple peek-a-boo game with that toddler. You hid your face behind your hands momentarily, then opened them and said “Peek!” When you did so, the child laughed and tried to pull your hands to keep them from closing off your face again. It was so much fun you did it again and again. Just to hear the laugh. Remember?
Now, was that short term, or the long term stuff you’d be better off without?
rpwilt-proletariat
ps
I have a theory – just a theory. Contemplating your own mortality at thirty is futile because it is genetically impossible. It’s like a three year old contemplating sexual desire. Understanding the concept of one’s own mortality is only possible when a gene hidden deep in the recesses of human DNA switches on, and, for most people, that switch gets thrown in the late fifties or early sixties. When the switch is thrown, understanding mortality is not the enlightenment that comes with finally figuring out a puzzling concept. It’s more like the enlightenment that comes when you find out that breaker is on after you touch the electrical wire.
Would I be better off forgetting those games of peek-a-boo forever, as if they never happened? Of course not; for one thing my metaphysics (as you’re so kind to call it) has a hard-and-fast rule against the denying of true things, and since it’s true that peek-a-boo took place (oh, many times), it would be wrong to wish that I could pretend it hadn’t.
But there are times to remember things, and done concsciously, no harm results (I posit). However, my brain, on its own, is more likely than not to throw up peek-a-boo memories at a time when it’s a distraction from Now (at best), or torturous to think about, and both of those things are likely to happen unconsciously. If I had control of my brain with regards to the past, I’m not suggesting I would never remember anything…but it would be far less often, and more constructive.
Your p.s. is interesting. Is it something about an aging body that you think flips this switch, or proximity to kicking the bucket? For my part, I came within inches of actually kicking the bucket once, when I was 23, and have mentally sought to recreate and/or imagine the experience many times before and since. Does this give me no more insight than someone of approximately my age who’s never done those things? Or only marginally more? I’ve also often thought that older people get so caught up in watching death approach that they seem to miss the point of it entirely; might I have a point there, or am I just like a teenager who thinks his parents don’t understand anything about sex?
There’s a quote about death that I love: “Death is not the opposite of Life. Death is the opposite of birth. Life has no opposite.”
Thanks again, Mighty One!
-PD
“We all experience it as being filled with our various memories and thoughts, but it’s still the same thing — and what it is, at base, is unreal.”
“…one thing my metaphysics (as you’re so kind to call it) has a hard-and-fast rule against the denying of true things, and since it’s true that peek-a-boo took place (oh, many times), it would be wrong to wish that I could pretend it hadn’t.”
Unreal, true things. Hmmm. This past is a tough thing with which to deal.
Regarding the PS: I don’t think an aging body directly triggers the gene that allows humans to be cognizant of their own mortality; rather, it is the aging (maturing?) mind. The body does contribute, however, when the mind realizes that the body can’t do what it once could.
No, close calls don’t count. A corollary to the theory is that youth, as a matter of self preservation, cannot, comprehend mortality. Should the young ever actually grasp the idea that life has an end, they would no longer be young.
Ok. I’ll bite. What’s the point of death?
rpwilt