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A Thousand Words

Saw this graphic on Flickr with a title that made me stop to consider what it might be saying. It has always taken me concerted effort to remain in the present though the days whirl by at dizzying pace. I must exist in the moment but live in either the past or the future. This light-cone representation of time past, present and future clearly spoke to my own relationship with the passage of time and life itself.

The present is intensely focused, a point where the actions from the past converge to an outcome.However, what happens at that point is very similar day after day and leads to a sense of stagnation. The past in comparison, is like the horizon line - you can chase after it forever and never quite reach there. Events morph and change with each recollection, take up more room than they had originally occupied, become imbued with meaning and significance that they had never possessed. Likewise, the future extends into a wide cone of possibilities - formed out of present actions, hopes dreams and desires.

I can see the farthest peripheries of the future cone more gossamer and faded out representing wishes that may be borne out or not whereas the center being more solid and substantial - a place determined directly by present actions, a place I might have some degree of control over. A picture is sometimes truly worth more than some hundred words.

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