This phrase first occurred to me on a Psilocybin trip (2020-11-07), having noticed that I’d fixate on something—anything—and it would become my world, the totality of my experience for a while. But that would end, there would be distance between me and that fixation, and it’d be onto the next thing. The arc of the trip is the arc of those vignettes of fixation. But my waking life feels surprisingly similar.
When I was at Apple, that was everything; there was no distance between me and that identity. But just months after I left, it felt like the distant past, and I was onto the next fixation. My current experiences feel just as totalized, but in fact they’re just as transitory. Despite all the flailing and striving and clinging, the reality is just that “there are many experiences.” This is basically an interpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of Impermanence.
Obviously, just as in the trip, some are more pleasant than others, and some experience-generating situations are “better” than others, but they all vary wildly and end. I find all this pretty comforting.