Monday, March 21, 2016
time
As I was making the "senior days left till senior chapel" countdown signs, it made me think about how relative time really is. We sit in class thinking "this is so boring" and wondering "when will this be over" but the next day, when we have a test, we wish we were still in yesterday when we were reviewing. As seniors, we keep counting down the days till we can leave, but in a few months, we will wish we had enjoyed our time in high school more. Just like us, Sethe and the other characters in Beloved revolve around time and especially thinking about the past. Sethe is consumed by the past, and does everything she can to put it out of her mind. However, there are some things that she romanticizes and almost misses - even things that are awful like Sweet Home. She remembers the good things - like Halle, her baby, etc - rather than her rape, her pain from carrying Denver and birthing her in a canoe, and her baby's death. Time is very fickle this way, both for us and for characters in Beloved.
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Time is really scary--once it is gone, it is gone forever and you can ~never~ get it back. As I think about my future, I have mixed feelings. I'm very happy to be moving forward with my life, but it also makes me sad because the moments I'm experiencing now won't be experienced in the same way five years from now. Like you mentioned, right now we all just want to graduate and go to college, but we don't take the time to appreciate what is currently in front of us. When we're in our eighties, we will have wished we were back in high school with each other. I think of how much work, energy, and time I've put in over four years playing sports in high school...during each season I would dread the practices, the meets, the games, but swimming in my last state meet, playing my last basketball game, and running my last track race makes me not care about those hard practices and wishing I could go back in time and do it all over again.
I think about this a lot.
After two migrations that completely changed the trajectory of my life and finally finding contentment, I thought that I had learned to appreciate every living moment. But often, I still catch myself wishing life away, whether it is wanting a break to come sooner or wanting to just graduate. But after a period of time passes, the nostalgia kicks in and the exact emotion that Abbey mentions here becomes overwhelming. The adventures to come are exciting, but we will also never do a lot of of what we did in the past four years for the rest of our lives.
Here's a visual representation of an extremely long life of 90 years:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-07-22-3Weeks.png
I agree that time is scary and ridiculously crazy. Sometimes it feels like days are just way too long, but at the same time it feels like there just isn't enough time to get everything done and everything is just happening and I can't keep up. But then there are also those moments that I relate to Beloved in that it kinda seems like my whole life is folding over on itself and its a strange feeling of realizing everything I've done to get to where I am and how much I have ahead of me and it's overwhelming. It seems like in Beloved and really in African culture in general as Ms. Quinet said there really isn't any thoughts about the future and planning for goals and such its just living for right now and not going back into slavery. They regret the past and still don't look forward to the future.
I think the thing about Sethe is she has the right, so to speak, to not want to remember her past and wish it away. We, however, aren't suffering like her and should take the time to realize that the memories we're making now are important and we'll want to remember them in a few years. Sethe, although she may want to remember the good times in her life, sometimes cannot because unfortunately for her, the bad comes with the good. for example, when she thinks of providing life to her own children through her milk and even escape from slavery, she must remember having her milk stolen from her and her friends dying in the escape process. It's extremely sad that Sethe has to look bad on her good memories and remember the bad things too.
What I seem to see a lot of is that time is spent a lot on remembering time. I feel as if we humans remember more of the bad times then the good, we might replay a bad thing that happens over and over again in our heads thinking of different possibilities and we see this in Beloved. Sethe tries to push back he bad memories but is unable to and even says that being insane is more blissful then remembering our hardships, granted hers are a lot worst mine or probably anyone of you in the class.
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