Time as an Artist

Time is organized in a specific way for most of us. We call that which we haven’t experienced the future, that we have experienced, we call the past, and an infinitely small and fleeting point in their exact average the present. The best version of the present is when we can put more bad things on the past side than on the future side. Somewhere between the memorable past, the knowable present, and the unknowable future, the magic feeling of uncertainty.

The entire reason people don’t watch the same episode of the same show, day to day, why they paint cars random colors, watch thrillers, love new stories, and crave new music, the reason people feel so strongly about surprises and change–is that we crave the unknowable. Of course an animal who sees time the way we do must crave the future just as our lungs crave air. Curious creatures need to sharpen their cognitive claws. We love to wonder.

Wonder is the reason many people get out of bed so happy. Curiosity is an addiction we have to learning something we didn’t know. Learning something requires there to be something one didn’t know before. Sometimes, being lost is the type of blessing you never knew you needed. Just keep going, you will walk right in to the future.