IN QUIET MOMENTS ALONE
Sunday, November 28, 2021
We inhabit multifarious lives.
I’m not channeling reincarnation or Sybil-esque multiple-personality disorder, but concurrent lives existing within the recesses of each of us.
One of these aspirations, one’s reality, of successes and failures – each of these we inhabit on the inside, suppressed and expressed only in quiet moments alone.
Our more public life, the one we live that others see - child, adult, parent, and grandparent.
Our parents saw one facet/view; our children saw another. Friends and colleagues see slightly different perspectives too.
Or do we live a different life, the one inside our head?
A world of imagination, recrimination, and damnation.
Inside our head, our private life – the words never spoken, the fantasies never acted out, the unrequited dreams of opportunities lost or never pursued, the defeats imagined of battles never fought, the failures of experiments never tried. The one-night adventures, the two-night disappointments – and over time, the blur in our minds, the confusion between what actually happened, what we thought happened, and what our fading memory imagines might have happened.
All, incidentally, without comment or conversation from any other party – so whatever we believe to be true can be true. Whatever we believe to be false can be false. Whatever we experienced way back whenever – can be whatever we want it to be, and we can re-tell those stories to ourselves over and over. Or we can tell them to others.
Which begs the question, how accurate is our memory?
Or, the flip side of that, how active is our imagination?
What lives are we living, and why can’t we talk more openly about the ones we wish we were?
And, to Alberta residents only: THIRD ACTion Film Festival is doing a 50/50 raffle again – buy a ticket, be a winner + make the pot richer, for a great cause – draw date is Dec. 22nd.