New but Familiar (2)

A few months have passed since I wrote New but Familiar (1). I was frightened by change. When I went back and read my past writings, I realised how many words I had devoted to the fear of change. Then a question emerged: what do “new” and “familiar” mean to me? And why did I associate them with change?

The familiar can be defined as something long known or well recognised—perhaps like a diamond or a mineral. At first, it begins as a minuscule fragment, a “new” element. Over time, it accumulates, layer by layer, until it hardens into something solid. This is how I imagine familiarity or wontedness. It must begin as something new. I don’t believe there is such a thing as immediate familiarity—something we’re used to without first experiencing it.

However, when we recognise something as familiar, we are already looking at it in retrospect. That moment has already passed. So is it the past, then? The experience itself no longer belongs to the present—but it can be felt in the present, only altered, like a hardened diamond. Familiarity, or experience, is something absorbed into the present.

Take a simple example: drinking coffee in the morning. It’s familiar to me. The sensation of comfort I feel from my morning coffee is present. I can only be sure of nowness, not of bygone moments—because I believe the experience of time, especially now, is the only moment in which existence can be affirmed.

At one point I quoted, “I think, therefore I am.” But to be more precise, I would revise it to: “I am thinking, therefore I am.” The only thing I can assert with any confidence is the fact that “I am thinking.” Familiarity, too, is a fact of the present moment—an emergence that seems to draw from memory, but exists only now.

Returning to the example of coffee: I know I’ve drunk coffee almost every day. That familiarity creates comfort. Yet the sensation of that comfort is fabricated now. All memories exist only in the present—they cannot exist in the past. If they did, they would be separate from me. They would not be me, but something I refer to. If memory exists as something new in the past, I cannot verify it.

So, if I’m right—that familiarity is a form of newness, and there is only ever this one dot of now—then what exactly is familiarity? I described it earlier as a diamond or mineral: something I witness only as a formed object. But I cannot observe the process of the past. I don’t deny scientific truths. The origin of the diamond exists, but it is perceived only now, as something that has emerged into the present. It is here, alongside me.

Yes, my perspective might be controversial or ambiguous.
But now, it’s clearer to me that the fear I once thought was fear of change was actually fear of a disconnection from Logos.
I was—am—splitting myself in two.
I referred to a past self and a present self, but both are present. Both are here. They are one.

The past, present, and future form a kind of trinity—except I don’t believe the future exists in itself. The future is merely a projection, a probability drawn from the present. It follows the present, but it doesn’t accumulate.

Now, it is time to—yes, I know this is a contradictory phrase—talk about Newness and Change.