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Second

If I told you to wait a second, it would mean the same thing as “wait a moment.” Second = moment. Of course, that isn’t entirely true. A second is a quantitative, measured, precise unit of time, albeit a totally arbitrary one that someone somewhere decided meant something. But now it means something real, something specific. But a moment is a little bit more abstract. It’s like a second but looser. It’s got the same stuff in the middle but it might extend out on either side, or it might recede inward, it might be shorter than a second, infinitesimally small until no one nowhere at no time has invented a quantitative unit small enough to express the idea of the moment anymore.

But for us, a second is basically a moment, because of the way we structure our lives and think about time. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not. I don’t really care about the strict, formal distinction between the two. I only care about it for the purpose of understanding the commonly-espoused life motto “live in the moment.” I want to know what it means to live in the moment. Does that mean to focus only on the current moment? And if so, is that “current moment” represented by the second we’re currently inhabiting? I don’t think it can, because things get confusing real quick when you think about how that second could really begin and end at any instant, and extend for exactly the duration of a second as we measure it, but end at a totally different time than the official, current “second” that Greenwich Mean Time or whatever global measure says is taking place. My point is that the way we view time is totally arbitrary, and so the phrase “live in the moment” cannot possibly be accurately translated to “live in the second” if it really means anything at all, because “live in the second” could mean a billion trillion different things and thus doesn’t really mean anything at all.

I’d like to think, on the other hand, that it means something to “live in the moment.” That there’s something to that and it isn’t just idealistic gibberish. I’d like to think that because I think that I have found contentedness “in the moment,” I just don’t really know how to do so on a consistent basis, and when I do do it, I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just know that I’m doing it. And I only know that for an instant, because usually when I become aware of it, the sensation doesn’t last long. It’s fleeting, and it gets chased away by awareness. Which is unfair. How can you teach yourself to live in the moment if the very act of living in the moment cannot be achieved by willing yourself to live in the moment? It’s fucking impossible. You cannot possibly do it. Which means your best bet is to just hope that you happen to end up in that serene “living-in-the-moment” state a reasonably large amount of times over the course of your life. Or, maybe, to engage in life activities which facilitate reaching that “living-in-the-moment” state, without actually, consciously willing yourself to achieve that state of mine. Which is a really fine line to cross. And I’m bad when it comes to not stressing out about which side of a fine line I might be leaning too heavily towards at any given instant. So that doesn’t really work for me, I’d much rather figure out some way of living in the moment consciously, actively. Of not being pulled out of the moment when I realize I’m in it. I’m not sure if that’s possible but I’d certainly like to try.

So, anyways, I guess I lied. Second ≠ moment.

Comments

  1. AbeApril 29, 2018 at 11:33 PM

    When people talk about living in the moment, I imagine they most often refer to limiting mind-wandering. In psychology mind-wandering, or daydreaming, is a mental state associated with a brain structure called the default mode network. wherein one characteristically will "engage in mental time travel or the consideration of personally relevant events from the past and the anticipation of events in the future" (wikipedia).

    Mind-wandering is generally associated with boredom, unhappiness, and stress. In my view, the opposite of this and the much more desirable state is the state of flow. The mental state of flow is associated with high focus on the task at hand, high contentedness, and the loss of the sense of time. When in a state of flow, (and also during deep meditation,) the default mode network goes radio silent.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

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