Memory, Moment by Moment, Day by Day

I take a call. I resolve, or fail to resolve, a certain problem. I take another call.

"Hi there," I decisively announce, "my name is Riley. How can I help?"

Each call is not a pure affair. It is always colored by specters of previous calls. The preceding customer may have pleased me with their spirit, may have scorned me with their impatience, may have left me bored with their incompetence.

The other day I heard the sound I hear quite often these days. *BEEP* 'You have an incoming call' *BEEP*. The second beep prompts me to prompt them. "Hello, this is Riley. How can I help?"

There is no taking these calls as individual affairs. Each is encumbered and informed by the call I've taken before. Each is burdened by the emotions that have been generated through my prior experiences. I felt this with much clarity this last week. I knew that the previous customer had upset me and that I was fuming, reeling, recovering from what had happened to me. Yet I had to face the next call. There was no time for a break. There were 15 people waiting to speak with us. My time, moreover, is observed and regulated, controlled and evaluated.

'Adherence', they call it.

Ha.

Leave me alone, I say. Let my time be nameless, I naively beg.

Yet this insight into the nature of my interactions, this intimation of memory's influence, is one that I wish to import into my life. I don't want my life to be burdened by the past. Informed, sure. Burdened, no.

For today is not yesterday. What has happened yesterday will always be a part of what is happening to me today. 'The present' is not a place that one can comfortably dwell. The past is right here, sitting in front of our stupid faces, informing and distorting who we are and what we may become.

I wish I could forget the previous call. I wish that paranoid man, rambling on and on about the government's attempts to steal his identity, didn't corrupt my ability to discuss with a sweet woman her current needs.

A bitter old man in Nebraska can prevent me from being close with a gentle middle aged woman in Kansas. True story.