The ideal spiritual orgasm.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera writes that there is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. He says consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time. In existential mathematics, Kundera contends, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

I readily buy into this. I most want time to slow, to even stop time, so that I can capture a loving moment. But if something happens that I don't like, I want to get it off my mind. As soon/fast as possible. Maybe that's why I'm moreorless immune to depression. I'd rather spend my time in a positive frame of mind. I want to dwell on it. Savor it. Keep it. I want to capture the perfect moment. Embrace it. Hold it forever. That would be the ideal spiritual orgasm. --Jim Broede