September 1
Yesterday is only today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream. Time too, like love, is undivided and has no steps.
The Prophet — On Time (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Yesterday is only today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream. Time too, like love, is undivided and has no steps.
A story you have told often changes imperceptibly. Perhaps it is an old quarrel with someone who was once close to you. For a long time you had a fixed version: who started it, which sentence went too far, why you left. It sounded the same every time, and that was exactly what made it believable.
Then something changes between you, or only in you. Perhaps you are back in touch; perhaps you have since said a sentence like that yourself. The next time you tell it, a different detail moves to the front. The events are the same, but their weight is redistributed.
What is uncomfortable is not so much that you might have been wrong before. The old version wasn't a lie; it fit the person you were back then, telling it. What is harder is that the new one has no firmer ground either. It feels fairer, but it too belongs to who you are today.
Perhaps you stop telling the story for a while. Then, if someone asks you how it was back then, you notice that what comes to mind first is how things stand between you today.
