chronicles, pt. 1

Originally written November 9, 2023

Part 1 of a 4-part series

How would I chronicle my life?

Well that’s much too broad a question, isn’t it? 

How would I chronicle this slice of my life, my current reality, all that is going on now?  

What does the chronicle of my todays look like?

There is only ever one today.  We know that.  Of course we know today is the only day we get.  I’m listening to a time traveling fiction audiobook on my commute this week, This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.  But I do not have the disorienting experience nor magical powers of time traveling.

I live in today.  I always do.  We cannot hold any power or have any experience outside of today.  

Attempting to control or live within the past or future is only a delusional prison.  We cannot change that which has already happened.  We cannot will ourselves into days that have not yet come, in efforts to guarantee what we’ll find when we get there.

Nevertheless, today strings itself together, with rapid, blurry succession and marriage to yesterday and tomorrow, and the speed at which they pass and glue themselves together makes time feel wobbly.  It feels like a magic portal sometimes: you look up and another month is gone.

In this sense, we’re all time travelers.

We’re only living in today, yet every today is passing so quickly that sometimes they’re hard to distinguish.

So even though there is ever only truly one – this is the defining characteristic of “today,” after all – all my recent days feel like many todays, as if they’re all here at once, all happening together, all impacting where I am and how I’ve gotten here and where I’m going.

If they were to be chronicled, wouldn’t they be united?  Wouldn’t it be one passage honoring the whole?

So what does the chronicle of my todays look like?