The baby looked at her parents, with a trembling lower lip.
Or just before the lower lip trembled.
Should I cry or not?
What do my parents feel?
I wanna go one way or the other.
What is the next act in my future?
Once it’s the future act (“I think I’m gonna cry”), what will be the next act in my past (“I always cry when I fall like this”)?
Neither has happened yet.
I just fell down from a height of one foot and I’m trying to gauge my position on the time continuum through pegging and classifying outcomes into “past” and “future.”
Need Help to Make the Choice
Should my lower lip tremble or not? I need some help. Without help, I can go both ways and that’s a burden.
To live in this Extended Present that is neither past nor the future is difficult.
I wish I was born with a long list of past and future events. “If daddy goes out the door and comes back eight hours later, this is present; neither past nor future. If daddy goes out the door but does not come back for eight years, then that is both past and future.”
Billions of times a day the future becomes the past. Somebody pushes the Extended Present over, for fear, joy, hopelessness, anger, love, for any reason. “I’ll be an officer.” “This won’t work.”
Then you see yourself remembering your past in a possible future — your present self saying “I always knew I’d be a doctor.” Or: “I always knew it wouldn’t work.”
The past also becomes the future. You “decide” how you agreed on something in the past and feel that the future can do nothing but follow that planted seed. You believe in Karma. You forget that nebulous stretch of “now” when everything could go in any direction. It is a moment of supreme freedom and fear.
“Present” is not “Here and Now”
One of the most formative books I’ve ever read was “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass. I was at college. I thought that was the wisest thing I’d ever read. And it was, as long as the college years lasted.
But “Present” is not “Here and Now” since it extends in both directions (Past and Future) for a measurable amount of time.
This is not poetry. I did not come up with the concept either. Albert Einstein has calculated thanks to his Special Relativity theory that the “Extended Present,” even though it’s an almost incalculable amount of time here on Earth, actually stretches up to 15 minutes on Mars! Google “Carlo Rovelli” if you like.
IMAGINE: “Extended Present” stretches up to 15 minutes on Mars!
The Clash Between Individual and Social POV
The real problem is this: I can feel I can mess around with my past and future by penetrating my Extended Present. (SIDEBAR: I don’t know in practical terms how this can be achieved but focusing on my witness-consciousness will have a lot to do with this amazing adventure.)
However, I’m part of a society and I’m already in other peoples’ past and future.
I’m already bottled, labeled, and put on a shelf for convenient consumption. I even have a price I’m sure (ask any HR department).
The daily life proceeds with pasts and futures marching down the Main Street lockstep, according to a schedule, with no time spent in an inconvenient Extended Present.
So there is an inevitable clash between my desire to explore my freedom by spending as much time as possible inside the Extended Present and the society’s interest to get things done in a hurry by expending as few resources as possible.
That’s how society saves energy/time and streamlines the daily flow according to well-established This-Past-Leads-to-This-Present-and-Future algorithms instead of wondering each and every time whether one should cry or not when falling from a height of one foot.
Babies fall. They cry. We know and accept this as normal. It’s not worth our while to train babies on their choices when they fall.
That’s the end of the story and we move on to the next pattern instead of getting stuck in the Extended Present.
This is how it works from society’s point of view.
Bad Faith
But from an individual point of view, to deny the existence of brief but real individual freedom we face during the Extended Present would be what the existentialists refer to as “Bad Faith” — that is, the claim that our present is 100% conditioned and determined with what had happened in the past. No, it’s not, as Einstein has proven it.
To understand the real structure of space-time, especially for a guy like me who knows next to nothing about mathematics, will be a lonely pursuit I’m sure. I’ll never understand the Reimann Space in this lifetime.
It’s My Lip
But at least before I cry, before I decide whether my lower lip should tremble or not, I’m not looking at anybody else anymore.
It’s my lip. I will act, and I’ll have it tremble or not, soon. But I won’t know it even myself until then.