It is not uniform like a piece of iron or butter.
- +..warped shoe
- +..climate grief
- +.. post punk
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The past is not a single set of formed and fixed happenings. Every present does indeed include past experiences, but the present is not simply a rearrangement of past experiences. The present is a new whole, a new event. It gives the past a new function, a new role to play. In its new role the past is “sliced” differently. Not only is it interpreted differently, rather, it functions differently in a new present, even if the individual is unaware that there has been a change. To say it pungently, present experiencing changes the past. It discovers a new way in which it can be the past for a present. The present is always a new whole, even if the individual is explicitly reliving a past. Emotions and memories from the past come as part of the present person. The past changes in a new present. Even if the past is wholly implicit and unnoticed,it can be carried forward into a new whole as part of the new, the process of present experiencing. Events of the past are not thereby falsified retroactively... but their role in the body can acquire a new function.
Gendlin, Eugene T
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