The Past Imperfect

About the past. We were there once. When we were there, it was the present and it had a past. Speaking of what had happened, the past of the past, we use the verb tense called the past perfect. Just like now, we were pretty sure back then that we had some things figured out, so we were doing things that we thought were OK. While we were doing them, we moved on. Looking back, what we were doing is described using the verb tense known as past progressive. Now that we inhabit the enlightened future of that past, also known as the present, we can see clearly that some of what we were doing was not OK. Call it the past imperfect. We should pay attention to the past imperfect, because it tells us what we need to know to make things better. It was an experiment rather than a mistake. No blame, no shame. End of grammar lesson. Sorry, I was intending to make this note easier to understand. I will try to do better.

As I was saying, (past progressively) I remember when we were befriending refugees, and it seems the job isn't done. 

Humanity hasn't paid attention to our past imperfect, and we are still getting things wrong: the left and the right scoring points instead of working together to make things better, gangs, civil war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, building walls protecting us from them, lies and bombs to get what we want, being comfortable here and now at the expense of those elsewhere and yet unborn: humanity as refugees from humanity.

That's what got me thinking about "You've Got a Friend." Until I checked Youtube and Wikipedia, I didn't know that Carole King wrote that song or who Carole King was, or who James Taylor was, or anything about their personal stories. In fact, I don't know much about music after the "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater". Grunge, reggae and hip-hop passed me by. 

But, for some reason, "You've Got a Friend" stuck. James Taylor says he thinks it's the best song ever written. I can't argue. I know it by heart and I don't remember having learned it, like it was always there waiting to be sung, present perfect and perpetual promise.

Listen to a 2010 live performance by Carole and James. Thirty-nine years after the song was written, Carol was greying and James had a haircut, and each was singing about their own past imperfect and the gift of friendship. I won't write about their individual troubles, those are their stories to tell. You can Google them. If you do, you will be impressed that each of them made it through what was not OK, learned from experience, and they are singing together on occasion better than ever. Friends.

Perhaps we are all refugees from some imperfect past. No blame, no shame.  Just an experiment. We can pay attention to the evidence and make things better. 

Also, it helps if you've got a friend, which means being a friend. Goes both ways or it doesn't go at all.