We have programmed brains,
and memories,
taught before we can think.

So I react to the present as
the person I was just a moment ago;
I constantly redefine and refine values,
but the pattern is clear.

With logic and new philosophy
I could rebuild a persona,
but am I not still at the mercy of the past?

Realizing my life could end at any moment, there are times when I look at her and I think about the future, and what it might be like for my older self to see her face later when my end is much nearer. They are moments of wasted emotion, but no less sobering.

Projecting into the future this way is an old and harmful habit that I’ve been addressing with myself for years. I’m not sure when it started, but I can remember the fear it and other poor emotional habits have generated over the course of my entire life, from the self-consciousness of fourth-grade choir practice to a near-mental-breakdown at thirty when I met death.

Even though today I have a better grasp of its trivial nature, I still often suffer needlessly through my imagination. I don’t truly know where that originates. Death, illness, unluck: something awful always lingers in life’s background — because anything can happen — and I tend to dwell on these things.

She is a big part of why I started examining these habitual malaises of mine. When we reconnected almost ten years ago, she was already much better than me at letting go of things — and I admired her for that.

Since then I’ve read volumes on Buddhism and Eastern philosophies, methods that profess the value of living in the present. It seems like such a simplifying and attainable concept — if only I could always maintain presence instead of thinking forward to a future over which ultimately I have no control.

Looking at her is a paradox; she is a symbol of both consuming love and wasted time. In that moment after our eyes meet and she recognizes the subtle problem within me, I wonder: is it even possible to exercise judgment — can we really reach beyond origin and mortality well enough to detach from them?