How One Second Lasts One Week

At a library book sale last week, at which I arrived about three minutes before its closing time, I picked up a Sophocles book and randomly read the page I turned to. It was a poem that lamented that, at least in my interpretation, the moment of an event is far shorter than the effect it has on a person's mind. I thought about all the time spent dissecting all the momentary incidents, short relationships, and longer relationships I've had and realized how true it was. I've been thinking about that very short moment of reading the line in that poem and I've been thinking about how long I've spent thinking about its implications. So true, so simple, and so strange. All those things that happen to us, momentary or not, make up the intricate structure of who we are. And then I was thinking about how long ago that little line was written, and how long that thought must have been going around.