I think I'm less philosophical nowadays as most of my thoughts are centered around actually living in practical reality, solving present obstacles and what not. It is a luxury I'd say to spend your days contemplating about reality when there are far more important matters to attend to.
I used to have more free time to let my mind wonder and wander on the nature of reality given at that time the curiosity to know was greater than the need to act.
Now, it's more so remembering past information, viewing it in a newer light with present experiences.
I think many of these philosophical musings only tend to make sense in a sticky way when one has already lived aspects of it in real life. If not, it's just drifting thoughts that animate the-whatever-that-engages-with-this-musings before dissolving back into abstraction.
Getting fully engaged with lived experiences however puts the here and now as the only reference point, which is true, only the present exists. The "But" here doesn't yet have the willpower to stand at the jury and defend its case against immediate necessity.
Past and future are markers in a timeline that help create coherence.
Focusing only on the present tends to create this effect of not considering what lies ahead and what came before in an almost disorienting way. You become ungrounded from sequence and consequence. The days blur into each other because you're not anchoring them to anything beyond their immediate demands.
For example, I do sometimes forget which day of the week I'm in. Tuesday feels like Saturday, Friday arrives as a surprise. The weekend comes and I wonder where the week went, partly due to not having any particularly memorable or forgettable, more so because I wasn't tracking its passage. I was just moving through it. Responding. Reacting.
Basically, the quicksand effect is when you're constantly moving to keep from sinking and you lose your sense of where you're standing in relation to everything else. The ground beneath you is always shifting, requiring attention and before you know it you've traveled some distance without really knowing how you got there or where exactly "there" is?
I mean, it's part of living life as an adult. Philosophy becomes something you live through rather than think about, which may have been the point all along. Learning how to live in the arena.
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