I read this short excerpt from the book by Bernard Cooper, Maps to Anywhere. It began with a reminiscence of the children's story of Cinderella. How she would spend her days sweeping cinders and waiting to be rescued by her prince. He used this to transition into how people will often accuse others of living to much in a fairy tale world. Their head is up in the clouds with their dreams, or it's stuck somewhere in the past. These people tell us to live in the 'now'.
Cooper goes on to describe the concept of 'now' as a tightrope between history-past and history-future....and some people have some clubbed feet. I believe that this is a pretty analogy regarding this concept. We are all walking this tightrope and those of us with clubbed feet are more prone to fall back into the past or into the unknown future. Either way it can be very damaging to someone's self worth. Because often times you will have these people who seem to always dwell over their actions in the past, or be anxious over things that haven't even happened yet, and might not even happen. Things that have occurred in the past are things that you cannot change, and the future is uncertain. I do believe that the only certainty is the 'now.'
However, Cooper makes good point when he states that "....You wish it was an hour from now. Or years ago. A fortune teller is not interested in predicting your Now. A psychiatrist is not paid to delve into your Now." Just because the concept of 'now' is the most certain it does not mean that people care about it. I think that this is because so many people are afraid of failure. Myself included. We dwell on the things that we have already lived and wonder how we could have done things differently to create a different future for ourselves. We could have said 'this' and things would have been so different. We over plan for our future because we don't want to make mistakes in getting to our ultimate goal. But we do not care about Now.
As the final paragraph on the first page of this story comes to a close, Cooper ties in his first analogy of Cinderella describing himself 'polishing his phrases on chapped knees, sweeping dirty words under the rug, and singing the only song that he knows.' The final paragraph of the entire story kind of turns the concept of 'Now' into an uncertainty. Cooper speaks of the end of the world and how it could happen at any given time. It could even happen now. I think that's a good way to end this chapter. It kind of sheds a light on how we don't really have control over as many things as we wish that we did.
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