Temporal Dissonance
Most days I wake up and feel at odds with my self.
I have memories from the day before (I went swimming, grocery shopping, and out with some friends), but I have a hard time feeling emotionally connected to the person I was yesterday. This occurs even throughout the day. I’m aware I was just watching Better Call Saul, but that seems to be a different person.
Of course, I am completely aware that every memory I have is in fact something I did or a situation in which I participated. It’s just that, when considering each moment separately, I feel detached from my other selves. It’s as if each moment is a puzzle piece, and I have a hard time putting the puzzle together because I don’t know what it looks like when it’s finished. I feel myself drifting into dyschronometria, and away from myself, too.
Time has always been a particularly interesting concept for me. It’s such an integral part of our lives, but it’s one of the few we can’t control. Minutes slip by while we sleep. Just like our heartbeat and our breathing, we don’t have to notice time unless we want to. And once we hear the ticking hands of a clock I feel an intense desire to smother the sound. Listening to our heart beat is a reminder we are alive and well; listening to a ticking clock is an indication that we won’t be alive and well forever. I am a millennial Quentin (from Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury) though I’m doing my best not to succumb to the same fate.
Time perception is an interesting psychological field aimed to understand how humans perceive time and, similarly, the moments in which we don’t perceive time correctly. They are called temporal illusions — that is, the illusion that certain events are taking more or less time due to supplementary stimuli or circumstances. Research suggests that drugs (such as cannabis), potential threat (skydiving), and even one’s own emotional state may distort time perception. However, one study claims that when we are afraid, our perception of time doesn’t slow down. Rather, when we replay the memory in our minds, we play back the memory in slow motion.
Still, this isn’t what interests me. I’m interested in something I’ve called “temporal dissonance.” It’s meant to describe the disassociation I feel with my past and future selves. We share the same name, the same house, etc., but it feels to me like an awkward family reunion with relatives you only see once a year. If I were to sit in a room with them, I fear I’d have nothing to say. I’ll always remember the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry describes leaving chores for his night self, saying something along the lines of: “Morning Jerry can take care of that.” It explains that feeling perfectly, the strangeness between each of our selves and the humor within.
If each moment of our lives is composed by a different self, then how can we perceive ourselves as one whole self? I feel each of my selves differently. At times I feel fatherly and filled to the brim with love. Other days I feel murderous, with an inkling to hurt someone. It’s as if my self is an anthill, and each ant is a different moment, a different self. In the end, they are all working together, but it’s difficult for me to step back and look at the anthill.
Every person is complex, and they change as time passes by. One year a man might be an alcoholic. The next, he might be a good father without any major vices. We grow and mature within our lifespan, and (hopefully) inch toward the best person we can be. But who’s to say who we are, or who we have been? I have a hard time verbalizing who I am. I know I’ve been rude in the past. I’ve been merciful, doubtful, and joyful. Using each of those moments, how can I come up with a complete picture of my self?
I guess my point is, we don’t really know ourselves. I’ve been lucky enough to explore a few of my passions, one of them being performing live theater. It was always easy for me to play a part, to relinquish my self for that of the character I was playing, and I think it’s because I never really had an inkling of my self in the first place. Even as a student, a traveler, a tourist, I’ve managed to blend in because I willingly took other identities for my self without having to sacrifice anything.
Roger Caillios calls this legendary psychasthenia, “the ability of some animals to alter their appearance in response to their physical environment.” This, Lacan argues, is what humans are constantly doing, a perpetual cycle of mirroring our social environment in order to better understand ourselves. Our struggle to become this ideal social self is futile, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.
“As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Are we destined to strive for an impossible-to-reach ideal self? Or is wholeness attainable?
Originally published on April 7, 2015 at www.stefanocagnato.com.
