An infinitesimal life

Everything that is happening, is happening in the present.
There is no way for something to occur in the future or the past — it can only unfold now.

Most of the time, our mind projects thoughts toward the future or the past. We build scenarios about what might happen, or we grieve over mistakes that already happened.

The thing is, our mind constantly escapes the scope of the infinitesimal now we are actually living in. We get caught in thoughts tied to memory, believing that the past truly existed as we remember it. Or we attempt to predict what’s to come and set intentions for what we expect to face.

In this back an forth we may feel a little resistance, the present moment seems obvious and subtle. Of course we live in the present. However of this, we don’t feel at ease on who we are right now, its like something is missing here. Yes this is my situation, but I want to travel there, be better. This seems like a contradiction : if I want to change, that means that my current self is not worth it?, why should I improve myself? how do I accept what is now?.

I have to claim I didn’t fully find an answer to this dichotomy. However I try to present a model that may clear the path a little bit.

The infinitesimal

I’ve imagined a model of life that I call Infinitesimal. It suggests that the present is such a small fragment of time that we can think of it as dt, similar to how we represent infinitesimal change in physics.

We are like a particle traveling along a path — a point moving through a continuous line of events, every instant is this dt that is part of a journey we must travel through.

If this may sound to you like a theory on destiny and every act we do is predetermined, let me telll you it’s not like that, I believe we ha an impact in our decisions and we could completley change ur destiny based on what we choose. I think it more like a path that has certain restrictions and heavy constrains, but we are not totally fixed to follow a trajectory. We can still change our velocity and direction along that path though, we could jump into other trajectories.

What I truly want to accomplish using this model is this: we can live a life where we become aware of every feeling, intention, thought, posture, and movement we make. This awareness — mindfulness — can only exist in the present moment.

Each decision that is made on the present will have an impact on the future, so I need to be thoughtful on what I try to do. If I am on a path that is made of instants, what I try to accomplish is to be profoundly immersed on that path, taking into consideration the projections I have on the past and future, but give them the space they deserve.

There is a interesting qoute form buddha that resonates with this, I am not sure if it clarifies the theory, but is a good practice to do:

“When walking, a monk discerns, ‘I am walking.’
When standing, he discerns, ‘I am standing.’
When sitting, he discerns, ‘I am sitting.’
When lying down, he discerns, ‘I am lying down.’” Buddha.

This illustrates how the discerning capacity of the mind allows us to live life as it truly is. We become aware of the discomfort in our body when sitting in an uneasy position, or we notice a thought entering our mind and simply let it pass through.

If we apply the same logic as in mathematics, the infinitesimal moments are part of a model where we can apply calculus. For example, we could make a prediction based on the derivative of this infinitesimal and the past instants, we could see beyond the present moment and make projections, knowing that they are not totally accurate.

This theory is not complete, this is an introduction, but I will try to develop it on the future, I hope it makes sense.