tenebrism

tenebrism
Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, 1602

Monday, February 23, 2015

Hemingway says YOLO (10)

"There is nothing else than now.  There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow.  How old must you be before you know that?  And if you stop complaining and asking for what you will never get, you will have a good life."

This quotation that we discussed in class was taken from one of Ernest Hemingway's novels, titled For Whom The Bell Tolls.  The story takes place in Spain at the height of the Spanish Civil War.  In this setting, the fragility of life is more apparent than ever, so it makes sense for one to encounter such a "Carpe Diem"-type quote nestled within the novel.

Hemingway is passionately reminding his readers the importance of living in the moment.  When he states, "There is nothing else than now," he is pointing out that both the past and the future are abstract concepts.  Yesterday is merely a memory, images stored in the brain.  Tomorrow comes from the assumption that time will continue on, and that we will be around to experience it.  It feeds off imagination, for no one has ever been to "tomorrow" in order to discover exactly what it has in store.  However, "now" is tangible; using our five senses, we can experience all that our "now" has to offer.  There is no need to assume or imagine what is going on "now", because we can simply tune in and see for ourselves.  

Often, people waste time dwelling on yesterday and waiting for tomorrow, missing the opportunity to experience the now. Imagine a scenario in which you spend each day of a month counting down until the next month, because you are looking forward to an event.  Once this event comes, it is not what you expected.  This makes sense, because the future is abstract and we have no means of discovering how it will pan out.  After the event, you realize that you could have accomplished something great over the last 30 days, but instead you've accomplished nothing.  In this scenario, you were negatively affected by thinking about both the past and the future.  While anticipating the future, you have created a month full of empty days that have not positively benefitted your life in any way.  Once the anticipation ended, you looked back on this folly and criticized your past decisions, instead of making new ones in the moment.  This is a repeating cycle of unhappiness and missed opportunity.

One of my pet peeves is listening to people constantly count down to friday and dread the arrival of monday.  As we count down to friday, we are disregarding the importance of every other day of the week.  And when friday finally comes, it lasts 24 hours, and soon enough monday is approaching and everyone is unhappy yet again.  If instead we took advantage of the privilege of living for seven full days in a week, perhaps we could begin something meaningful on monday and have something to be proud of on friday.    

1 comment:

  1. Excellent blog- well written, thoughtful, engaging and it carries an important message. Well done Brittany!

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