The Road.

Buddhists and others of similar persuasion tell me that the secret of happiness and fulfilment is to live the moment. Forget the past which has gone, and the future which hasn’t happened yet. There is only the moment.

This is inconceivable to me. I see nothing that is identifiably a moment. Time never stops, just as the sand in an hour glass never stops running. Living life with a physical body in a material reality is a never ending procession of prospect turning into memory with nothing in between. That, it seems to me, is the first dimension: the road on which whatever we are never stops travelling.

But then there’s the second dimension, the one we might call the current situation. ‘Current’ is an inadequate term in the circumstances, but it will have to do. That’s the group of fixtures with which we surround ourselves – family, home, friends, work, hobbies, and so on.

But fixtures come in various states of fluidity, and they’re all temporary. So what happens when the current situation drips away to nearly nothing, and all that’s left is the first dimension? The first dimension becomes mysterious to the point of being effectively unknowable. The road becomes a dark one on which we stumble blindly, with only memories visible behind us.

Buddhists and others of similar persuasion tell me that I’m talking about the Dark Night of the Soul, and maybe I am. And I suppose when they refer to 'living the moment,' they really mean 'experiencing the flow.' And maybe that brief glimpse of timelessness that I mentioned recently wasn’t a delusion after all. But how can I know?

Meanwhile, this thing in my mouth is getting on my nerves.