Already Over
Man, summer hasn’t even really started yet—except for the part about school being out—but it’s already starting to feel like it’s already over.
When I tally up the days remaining and all the stuff that I want to do—and even more to the point, all the stuff that I don’t want to do—it seems like the time’s all gone; how am I ever going to fulfill my ambition to be absolutely without ambition if I’ve got to squeeze that into vacation plans, bike rides, and plowing through Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, or, at least, The New Yorker most weeks?
Thinking this way is, I know, to commit some strange cognitive error by which one compresses events by cataloguing them. That is, it’s clear to me that I misrepresent the way things really are—and will be—by casting forward and imagining that all these days yet to be have already, essentially, passed by. I conceive in clumps, in other words; a week in July gets smooshed down to a single concept: visiting New Mexico; three weeks in August turns into a nothing more than an idea; and before you know it, all the time I’ve planned for has disappeared.
It’s like when you pretend you’re going to win the lottery and you try to imagine how you’re going to spend the $200 million bucks; by the time you’ve planned your huge party, given huge monetary stipends to all your friends, bought a few custom bikes, and paid off the mortgage, man, you’re already broke and might as well not have won in the first place.
The thing is, I know that before September, there will be lots and lots of time that I’ll just be looking to fill up; long mornings when I’m tired of reading or writing and don’t know what to do with myself; so even though summer’s pretty much already gone, it’s not used up; me neither.
When I tally up the days remaining and all the stuff that I want to do—and even more to the point, all the stuff that I don’t want to do—it seems like the time’s all gone; how am I ever going to fulfill my ambition to be absolutely without ambition if I’ve got to squeeze that into vacation plans, bike rides, and plowing through Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, or, at least, The New Yorker most weeks?
Thinking this way is, I know, to commit some strange cognitive error by which one compresses events by cataloguing them. That is, it’s clear to me that I misrepresent the way things really are—and will be—by casting forward and imagining that all these days yet to be have already, essentially, passed by. I conceive in clumps, in other words; a week in July gets smooshed down to a single concept: visiting New Mexico; three weeks in August turns into a nothing more than an idea; and before you know it, all the time I’ve planned for has disappeared.
It’s like when you pretend you’re going to win the lottery and you try to imagine how you’re going to spend the $200 million bucks; by the time you’ve planned your huge party, given huge monetary stipends to all your friends, bought a few custom bikes, and paid off the mortgage, man, you’re already broke and might as well not have won in the first place.
The thing is, I know that before September, there will be lots and lots of time that I’ll just be looking to fill up; long mornings when I’m tired of reading or writing and don’t know what to do with myself; so even though summer’s pretty much already gone, it’s not used up; me neither.
posted by Professor Dave at 10:22 AM
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