Time and the Art of living The article “Time and the Art of living” by Robert Grudin talks about time of one’s journey through his/her life, the memory of the past, hope and fear for the upcoming future, one’s experience of the present, wit, courage, time, and ways to communicate with the past and future. Living is an art; it’s an art that follows how one can color his/her life for better or for worst. This article is very interesting. After reading this article I think that by facing the memory of the past, hope and fear for the upcoming future and the present will help us learn more on our self and identify the problems that we should face and instead of running from those mistakes, we should face them and learn from them. Sometimes the past can be very painful, our loved ones that we lost and painful memories that we had that keeps hunting us. We sometimes try to forget those painful memories from the past thinking that it is ok to forget them and move on without facing them. As what Grudin, Robert says “This uneasy relationship with a rich and voluminous intellectual resource is a …show more content…
Grudin, Robert states that “we take almost every opportunity to ignore, demean, and otherwise abuse this dimension” (18). We don’t think about the future, the decisions we are about to take for the future, and the goals we set for ourselves. We try to ignore them because we are scared of the path that we are about to take. Three months ago, I was scared of the path that waits for me. I lost contact with a certain someone that is very important to me and that made me scared to face the future and to accomplish my goals without that certain someone in my life. But now I realize if I don’t do anything to change that mindset, I will be always scared of facing what awaits for me in the future and to accomplish my goals that I made for
Man must not only remember his past, but also choose to remember it as it really happened—for, to again quote Eliot, “What might have been is an abstraction" (175). Fantasizing about an abstract, idealized past will never give success i...
Primo Levi once said, " Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.." The memory of a human being is a fascinating matter, but it is not something that stays with us forever. Memories will often change or multiply with unnecessary information, but they are what define you as you.
For example I could be offered the opportunity to get the job I always dreamed of but then I decline because the fear of not doing what I needed to do like finish school haunts my brain. The reason why that can be a problem is because even though I know I would do extremely well at my job there is always the fear of something going wrong and then I 'd have no other type of work due to the fact of not finishing school. Another example would be missing a family members wedding because I still needed work to be done. It 's always the precious moments that always get shot down due to the fact that people are constantly told they need to do this or that and they listen and continue to miss every single moment or opportunity in their life that could change them
In Nuremberg or National Amnesia, A quote that caught my attention was, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat the past” (Tutu 457). I feel the quote means that by forgetting the past you also forget the lessons you learned with that experience, which will cause you to repeat it without the knowledge you learned
“Holding onto past memories helps humans avoid pain in the future. These experiences also help them make better decisions in the future.” (Kenny) Many people advise others to learn from the past and apply those memories so that you can effectively succeed by avoiding repeating past mistakes. On the contrary, people who get too caught up with the past are unable to move on to the future. Memories are the foundation of a person's mindset because what you make of them is entirely up to you.
Exploring the duality of memory; how we perceive the past, learning about the duality of the present; how we are constantly between the expectation of the future and past experience, as well as coming to the realization of the duality of life and death; how we are always living and dying at the same time. We are constantly in a state of suspension between dual experiences, whether they be life and death, love and loss, hot and cold, fast and slow, close and far, or past and future. There is no differentiating between them as they are all interconnected and depend on each other for their own existence. There would not be one without the other and we cannot appreciate the good without the bad. Life comes with infinite possibilities and even more ways to experience them, so we must take it all in with acceptance and appreciate the suspension act of life while we
Repressed memories is a topic that has been an ongoing dispute among some, however ac...
A quick inspirational search on Pinterest, Google, or any self-help book will lead you to some quote or image about how the key to life is to “live in the now.” Forget the past, ignore the future, and immerse yourself in the moment you are in completely. It’s a nice sentiment, but the truth is now happens too quickly to grasp onto. By the time you utter the one-syllable word, the now you meant to identify has already occurred and been replaced an infinite amount of times over. As a result, in order for now to exist at a level in which it can serve a purpose, it must be tied to something— a person, an aspiration, or a time. In Christopher Isherwood’s, A Single Man, the protagonist, George, had tied his now to his recently deceased partner, Jim, and struggles to accept what his
Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders.” We always think that forgetting is the solution to our misery and our problems. We indulge in the idea that ignorance is bliss and that what we don’t know won’t hurt us. But
What I found is that if one were to sit down, and think of their future realistically, they could certainly find an approach on life that will not cause one to regret the...
THE POWER OF THE MOMENT: The ability to stay in the present is a virtue. Most people are always living either in the past or in the future. So they are either worrying about the past, worrying about the past pains, the past results, the past failures, past relationships, past struggles, or they are ruminating about the future fears, the future impossibilities, the future achievements, future possibilities. Worrying about the past or future would not benefit you as you are putting yourself in a position of disadvantage.
... important to always move forward with your life. There is no point in worrying about the past because you will never be able to get it back, all you can do is go on and learn from your mistakes.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a famous quote by George Santayana. Although the r...
It was not too long before I discovered the faults in my erroneous living. I finally realized, and truly not a moment too soon, that if I did not start living for the present, my future would soon become my neglected present. I would have wasted my life doing meaningless things and I would have no experience to share with anyone who may be interested in the uneventful life I had led. After I came to this startling revelation, I grew even more apathetic in my depression. I truly felt that there was nothing I could do to remedy this situation and was at a total loss for solutions. Soon enough, though, I concluded that there was no alternative to hard work to change the current state of affairs in my life. It was then that I truly embarked on the most difficult journey of my life thus far. This being the journey of self-alteration and successfully changing my own behavioral patterns.
Life is constantly throwing curveballs. They come from every angle, at differing speeds and all make diverse, lasting impacts. Yet, no matter how many are thrown in our direction, one may never be able to know when or from where the next is coming. Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, once said that “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forward.” Meaning that, much like the curveballs, there is no way to understand what life will throw at us in the future, yet we must learn based on the experiences that have occurred in our past. For instance, when one becomes aware of the fact that a curveball is in their near future, and is ready to throw them off course, there is no time to think of what steps to take in order to get out of harm’s way. One must act solely on instinct, while simultaneously thinking through the process. We must then continue to think it over after the ac...