When we look back at our lives, we experience a highlight reel of sorts, all the memorable good and bad experiences and this cinematic metaphor extends into thinking of ourselves as a fixed snapshot: I’m angry, I’m happy, etc. Henri Bergson reminds us that we are not a finished product, we are a process. We are not snapshots, we are a continuing ever-changing flow of experience. In his book Creative Evolution, Bergson uses many metaphors to snap us out of this fixed and separated mindset:
A snowball “continually swelling with the duration which it accumulates”
A "bud" sprouted from its parents, remaining united to the "totality of living beings by invisible bonds"
An embroidery canvas passed from ancestor to descendant; as the "ancestor passes on" the canvas, each descendant adds their own "original embroidery" to the shared history
and my favorite:
A musical theme existing as a whole despite its variations. The individual represents a unique expression of the broader current of life.
