What if the present does not actually exist?
By the time we notice a moment,
it has already become the past.
And the future never arrives as the future
it simply appears
and immediately becomes something we remember.
So perhaps we never actually live in “now.”
Maybe consciousness is always
one fraction of a second behind reality,
mistaking its memory of existence
for existence itself.
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Canary word: Present
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141,720 Literary Works • 675,610 Reviews
okay but if the present doesn’t exist, technically I never posted this.
~_~
It blew my mind. The whole concept is so complex but it makes total sense.
It's saying that we might not even live in the present because our brains are lagging behind real life. My favorite line was, "By the time we notice a moment, it has already become the past." It’s so true though! The exact second you think about "now," it's already gone.
Then it says the future doesn't really exist either because "it simply appears and immediately becomes something we remember." hello??
I loved the ending "one fraction of a second behind reality" and we are just mistaking a "memory of existence for existence itself." It’s written so simply but it sounds so clean and professional and not boring i guess.
This is a thoughtful and intense little poem! My head always spins when I think about this, and I like how succinctly you unpack the concept and leave it for the reader to soak in.
That opening question is so engaging; I love how conversational it feels, like somebody's just turned to me and shared something that's on their mind. I kind of wish it was 'doesn't' rather than 'does not', to really lean into that!
This line is quite clunky. This concept is a difficult one to articulate concisely, and I do think it deserves a place in the poem, but this feels like it's belabouring the point a bit too much. I wonder if this might be a moment to reach for some metaphor or other figurative language?
These last two lines are really fantastic and are, for me, the real highlight of the poem. There's something so sad and haunting about them, but I'm not sure I could articulate why.
A general point: I wonder if you could play more with the process of reading, and how it ties into this concept of time always progressing? I'm not sure how you'd do that, but it's something to think about!
Great work!
Haha thank u i genuinely just dumped a philosophical thought about time here and called it a day now you’re making me think about my own nonsense more deeply than I intended to : D