Defining Moment

I have been listening studiously to the Berkeley philosophy podcasts and one of the many gems I have discovered from its analysis of Dostoevsky’s ‘Brothers Karamazov’ is that many of the characters come predisposed with their own defining childhood memory that shapes the manner in which they relate to the world.  For example, Alyosha has the memory of his mother carrying him over to the crucifix while slanted sunlight shone through the window; Dmitry has the memory of the stranger buying him a bag of peanuts; for Father Zosima it is obviously his last conversation with his dying brother.  While it is typical of clinical psychology to seek out the negative influences of childhood memories and then interpret symptomatic adult behavior, Dostoevsky’s characterization in 'The Brothers' is notable for its tendency to emphasize the positive influence of such memories. 

So what would be my defining moment? I thought about this for a while, perhaps too long to be authentic.  My childhood is largely a blur to me; I equate memories now mostly with ideas, as a long genealogical chart of my philosophical views. My childhood is nothing but a treasure trove of sensations.  Should I be so down on base sensations? Have I become so jaded in my adult life?  So I thought about this deeper, quick flashes passed by, and I found them strange with respects to their lack of profundity, it was scraps of life: waiting on the bench during a little league baseball game, walking through swampy fields and reveling in the insect life, petty thefts, petty insults. 

Eventually I honed in on my defining moment, and in a way it surprised me.  It is something I have written about before, and maybe this very act has influenced me, but the more I think about the memory the more it takes on significance in my life.  It is the night all the kids in my hometown played manhunt, and I was selected as one of the hunted.  The sun was just going down and the town was eerily quiet except for the scramble of hiding children and the scavenging of the hunters.  My moment is hiding in front of the post office behind a shrub, staring at the shrub, the grass, the way those sorts of things look as the last rays of sunlight are dying.  It was not so much the shrub, but the sense of involvement in that moment, being a part of a larger game, a larger community, a larger purpose.  I look back and think there was no fear in that moment, no hardships, I felt the oceanic experience of the world in ways I am nostalgic for now.  This is my defining moment and I seem to relate to it inversely at present, as one at odds with this lost Eden.  All of my philosophies, my pursuits of the mind, they feel small in comparison with this lost gift of youth.  Not to say I am depressed in my present state, but I do feel the absence of something, and maybe that is the point, like Anne Sexton wrote:

Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal

towards rites I do not know, waiting for the lost

ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust

would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.