"every new life on offer here begins now. And now is midnight. It begins now. All these futures. That's what is here…Every other immediate present and ongoing future you could have had."
- Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
Here is all there is. Now is all we have. Every moment is an emergent midnight. Every moment carries with it the click of a clock's second hand calling forth the dawn.
The present and the possible are intricately interlaced and intertwined. This is where life lives. This is where our life lives. This is where all our lives live. The present is the only place where anything is possible, and anything that is possible is only possible in the present. Within the present we are Now-Here, and outside of it we are No-Where.
There is a name for the place found at the periphery of the present; purgatory - the moment when we are pulled from the moment, when we are "Between lives", when "disappointment is felt in full", when, as Nietzsche might say, we cease all our Yes-saying to "what is necessary in things", when we lose the sweeping gesture found in the love of fate. Because "If you truly want to live a life hard enough, you don't have to worry. You will stay there" and "you [will] get to live it until you die".
Sometimes it feels like we are simply lost; lost to life, lost to ourselves, lost within the distant and disregarded static humming amidst the clamor of a world already overburdened by noise. But if we could slow down long enough to simply look around, we would see exactly where we are. We would see ourselves tall, sharp, and distinct both with and against the backdrop of the world.
We have always been right here.
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