When I was six years old, I tried to learn to ride a bike.
“Pedal backwards to stop”! They screamed as I weaved about, my inner ear protesting against this new locomotion to which it was being subjected. “…backwards” came again the distant cry, as my universe expanded from front yard to sidewalk.
Alas, even at this tender age my powers of reasoning were tragically formidable; to pedal backwards seemed counter-intuitive (here a paraphrase of what I could have been thinking): “I don’t trust these people, they might be family but that certainly doesn’t preclude sadistic fun at my expense. No, they want to see me pedal backwards expecting to stop, and then laugh in delight at my surprise when I start going backwards. And then where will I be? Ha! I’ll show them.”
One can wobble on uneven sidewalks for only so long. I fell, and gave up.
Three years later, I was the only person I knew who couldn’t ride a bike. I have no memory of the event itself, how long it took or the bruises sustained: I only remember the shame of realization, followed by pride of accomplishment, then again the shame of my excessive pride at such underwhelming achievement.When I was twelve years old, I began to experience interest in girls and the ineffable mystery of their bodies. One girl in particular, sitting two rows right and one row up, whose glance made my stomach feel empty when I was full. That’s love when you’re twelve, I suppose. One day on the playground, her little sister accused us of being “in love”, which slander immediately drove us both to expiation by denial.
The fear of appearing vulnerable is a symptom of adolescence; it’s a time of paradoxical advance and stasis. Erikson: “The problem of adolescence is one of role confusion—a reluctance to commit (italics mine) which may haunt a person into his mature years.”
The future is a concept so abstract as to rival love; but how is the present defined? A very subtle tautology, that chiding admonition to “Live in the present”. We can do little else, to live is to be in the present. They’re synonymous. But I think these people mean to say simply, “Redefine the past so you don’t feel like crap all the time”. The concepts of present and future are predicated upon and indivisible from that of the past, memory is our interpretation of what has happened. Primum movens , the past is First Cause, unmoved while moving us, out of potentiality towards actualization. We all live in the past, it’s the only place we exist in any concrete sense, Future Potentia, present Actus, turning and returning in the eternally widening gyre.
