Visiting the moment: because living there is overrated

Every moment is of the moment when you’re in the woods…

– The Prince, Into the Woods.

I’ve read a lot of praise for living in the moment. As someone with a memory disorder, I would like to take a moment to offer an alternative perspective.

When I was in undergrad, I was taking 40mg of Adderall. This is four times the starting dosage, and the highest available dose in a single pill. Adderall is a stimulant originally marketed as a weight loss drug, but now it is most commonly prescribed to treat ADD/ADHD and autism. I was using it to treat my ADHD and memory problems, and still do albeit at a much lower dose.

At this time I was 5’5″ and 100lb. I was always tired and would experience heart palpitations whenever I tried to do anything athletic. Even running to catch up with a friend was out of the question.

Once a week, usually Saturday, I would skip my dose to give my body a break. In my unmedicated state I had the attention span of a corgi and the demeanor of a 6 year old with way too much sugar. I needed to be watched or I would wander off and forget to eat. My friends would take care of me, allowing me to trail after them, chattering non stop about whatever popped into my head. I remember very little of these days. Mostly stories I have been told about silly antics I would convince people to do.

In my raw state I had no filter, no sense of stranger danger, and no concerns about the past or future. Indeed I had minimal ability to conceptualize the past or future as anything other than a story I once told myself.

But that’s really all anyone’s past is. There is no archeological evidence of my hesitantly supervised trespassing onto the roof of the student union building; just the reported memory of one anxious friend and a single visual snapshot in my mind of a view of footsteps in snow from a high vantage point. Without these stories, it would be as if it had never happened.

But it did.

At least I think it did.

This is the dark side of my mind. So much of my life has had no witnesses.

Now I don’t eat gluten, I only take 10mg of Adderall, and I weigh a much more healthy 135lb. I can sprint for a bus, and climb stairs, and I eat three meals a day. I still don’t have much stranger danger, but I do know how to talk in my head without talking out loud, and I haven’t wandered off in years.

I still remember less than I would like. Less than average. Sometimes my partners seem to know more about my life than I do. My history is comprised of stories others have told me about myself, stories I have told others, and a scattering of pictures with breif labels written in sloppy hand writing in the margins.

For me, living in the past is impossible. But I make plans for the future, and tell myself stories about them so I will remember what matters to me. And I try to remember my mistakes so I don’t repeat them. I wish I could learn from my experience more effectively. This weakness is a constant frustration.

This is how I live. It is more in the moment than anyone I know. I am constantly reveling in my sensory experiences, and thinking thoughts that feel new and exciting and revolutionary (and then forgetting them, only remembering the elation of discovery, not the discovery itself). It is only care-free in the moment. Only pleasant in the here-and-now. In moments of abstract assessment, it is harrowing.

In the play Into the Woods, The Baker’s Wife has a brief and exciting tryst with The Prince, after which she sings a fascinating song in which she laments the stark contrast between her mundane, workaday life and the exotic experience of having sex with a relative stranger in the woods.

Is it always either less or more,

Either plain or grand,

Is it always “or”?

Is it never “and”?

That’s what woods are for;

For those moments in the woods…

She eventually comes to the realization that being able to briefly step out of her own story gives her a greater appreciation of her context.

Having been able to remember her context after briefly forgetting it brings more significance to her life, now that she knows what it feels like to have something else; somewhere else.

Just remembering you’ve had an “and” when you’re back to “or”

Makes the “or” mean more than it did before.

Now I understand…

And it’s time to leave the woods.

This song is important to me because it reminds me of the necessary balance between having a life solely of moments strung together, and being inextricably embedded in your context in time and place.

Without the ability to step into the woods, so to speak, life is boring and mundane. But living in the woods doesn’t feel like much of a life at all. In order to be comfortable, you need both.

Oh, if life were made of moments.

Even now and then a bad one.

But if life were only moments,

Then you’d never know you had one…

So, I am here to tell you that living exclusively in the moment sucks. It sucks because it doesn’t feel like life. It’s important to have moments, from time to time. And to remember them. Go ahead, visit the moment. But don’t live there. Trust me.

Let the moment go.

Don’t forget it for a moment though…

-The bakers wife, Into the Woods