And that's why they call it the present

I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the scrapbook my mom gave me as a graduation present. Right on the first page are two juxtaposed photos of me, one from freshman year and one from senior year.  However the chronological contrast is only appreciated by myself and my mother (and maybe people that have personal memories of the captured moments) because any outside observer would undoubtedly fail to note four-year the time lapse of the two uncandidly smiling faces.  From all appearances, I have not changed a bit.

Change is quite the enigma.  Have I changed? Relative to what?

Does my shift in religious/political ideology mean that I (my being) have changed?  Do a couple new hobbies and an ever-so-slightly modified social circle make me a different person?  It’s 1,460 days and several thousand dollars later and I’m still here.  In the same pair of sweat pants.  At my house.  Getting caught up in the same mindlessness of home life: eating, cooking, cleaning, errand-running, to-do-ing.  

I’m still scribbling Notes to Self in the attempt to catch the spills of my brain that seems to be stuck on the perma-momentum track of academic productivity.  Lists of books to read, movies to watch, things to buy, tasks to perform all must be captured and held hostage on the check list until they can be satisfactorily crossed off---lest they be (God forbid!) forgotten. 

But if there is one change I have observed since my return home as the Graduate Alumnus Bachelor Degree Bearer, it is that my fear of the infinite abyss of memorylessness has subsided significantly.  I don’t really make many lists anymore or even journal as much as I used to.

Perhaps it’s apathy.  Perhaps it’s one step closer to attaining the Nirvana of existing permanently in the present moment.  Or perhaps it’s just a phase. 

But if there was ever an idea that has motivated me to live in the present, it is this:

“Steve Graham points out that you and I are ourselves more like a wave than a permanent thing. He invites us, the reader, to think of an experience from your childhood, something that you can remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there, after all, you really were there at the time, how else can you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are therefore, you are not the stuff from which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, then read it again until it does, because it is important.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)