NOW

It was Annie Dillard who said the way we live our moments is the way we live our lives, a reminder for which I’m grateful because when we splice our lives into units like years, months, and weeks, it’s easy to let the smaller moments that make up the now slip past us.

Every act of creativity is both cause and effect in our lives—it is the thing we make and a thing (among other influences in our lives) that makes us—it is a very present thing. Past failures from those efforts, especially, are helpful; in many ways they teach us better than success ever could. But together with our triumphs, they are over and the person we were is changed; in effect, gone. Replaced by the person we are now. Failures belong to the person we once were, and so ...

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