Who's afraid of the present?

the before trilogy, living in the present, and preserving beauty

I am a chronic movie-rewatcher, so it is no surprise that I have watched the Before trilogy more times than I can remember. Mostly Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the first two movies. The third one, not as often, because I’m probably too much of an optimist to enjoy facing its reality even though I recognize it. I think the reason these films appeal to me so much is because they raise a lot of interesting questions that I love to explore and challenge myself on, so here we are. This little piece has been sitting in my Substack drafts for months, wondering if it would resonate with anyone at all besides me. It might as well see the light of day. It’s related to the Before trilogy as it explores the main question that these movies have always raised for me: our fear of living in the present.

If you’ve read my essay on finding meaning in the present moment, you know that’s something that I consider essential to how I live life, because I believe that so much of the meaning of our life experience comes from embracing what is.

Yet, I contradict myself. I watch movies like Before Sunrise and, when Jesse and Celine agree not to call or write because it would just ruin this beautiful thing they shared, I understand them. Let’s just preserve the magic, why ruin it? But I can’t help but feel so curious about why people like myself can simultaneously agree with that while also claim to be all about the present moment. Isn’t that the opposite? Is it a blind spot?

In Before Sunrise, Jesse and Celine make a choice: to focus on a story, on potential, on what might have been, instead of living in the present. Does that romanticisation of stories and what-ifs lead us further away from living real life? Maybe. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while: the gap between leaving something untouched, preserved, perfect, versus choosing instead to live, even imperfectly. My instinct here is that we prefer to live in the present when it’s easy, and in stories when we’re too intimidated by the present’s fragility. The latter comes naturally. That’s when we choose to retreat to somewhere where the usual tricks of life can’t touch our beautiful stories. We can’t worry about making mistakes and creating the potential for future regrets, if we are not doing anything at all.

The allure of romanticised stories

To people like me, beautiful moments captured in time have a very real appeal. I realized a couple of years ago that the prioritisation of beauty, what Donna Tartt calls the “morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs”, permeates my life. I write; I spend an eternity in a glimpse of a moment to transform it into the right combination of words. I’m a photographer; I obsess over capturing beauty the way I see it for others to be able to see it too. I love beautiful things too much- and it can be the same with stories. But that’s why I’m challenging myself by exploring why I do that and whether I actually believe I should.

The fear of the present

The present moment is fragile. Reality is unpredictable, and most of all, imperfect; the opposite of a story with a nice ending that you already know. Dwelling on what might have been is less painful than facing what is, or what could be. When we don’t care about our stories, when we don’t value beauty and perfection to a fault, we’re much more likely to live; but driven by a fear of our precious experiences fading into nothing, we choose to lock them in their own moment in time. Fond memories to always look back on, knowing nothing new can come to wear them down. That is something the romantic in me feels wholeheartedly.

Do you want to be truly living, or are you okay with deriving meaning from past experiences and future fantasies? I think that’s where the question lies, and I think you can be okay with both. Of course the present moment has meaning, but I believe the stories you collect do as well. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, so we’re exploring this space in between. Some people want to live, to do, carpe diem, no matter what. Some are on the other end: too afraid to live, too evasive of reality. The former embraces the richness of life with all of its tricks; the latter sits in the comfortable certainty of being unable to alter what once was.

Balance?

Is one way inherently better than the other? Instinctively, of course, living in the present is. But surely there’s some arguments in favour of the romantic alternative? Here are three I can think of:

First, there’s hope and optimism: Jesse and Celine could always hope for a potential reunion, the future was fully uncertain. They couldn’t know, so why not be optimistic? And as we saw, they did end up meeting again in the second movie. At the same time, I recognise there’s a certain pessimism at the core of this stance: you’re assuming that anything will just fade out to nothingness, ruined, always ruined. Sometimes that comes from pessimism, sometimes from a realism that stares at the uncertainty of life and the complexity of human connections.

Then, a sense of control: Maybe a bad coping mechanism? But the comforting sense of control they got from deciding not to stay in touch felt better to them, at least at that point in their lives, than facing the potential fizzling-out that would likely come. Later on, that changes: in Before Sunset, the second movie, they’ve changed their stance. They sense they are running out of time, they have experienced more disappointments than they expected, so they’re willing to give this one a try and be okay with whatever happens.

And finally, inspiration: I guess this is my favorite one. Because daydreaming is probably better for your creativity than dealing with the uncertainties and stresses of everyday life. If you’re a creative person, anything that can offer you the gift of inspiration is priceless. Poetry and art are made of yearning, for better or for worse. (But hey, I’m not endorsing this.)

But… One of the things that makes these films beautiful is that they’re a trilogy. I’m sure if Before Sunrise remained a standalone movie it would have still been popular, but at the cost of all the later meaning that follows. The second movie feels like a liminal space where Jesse and Celine decide to take advantage of the present and live. In the third one, they face reality. It has caught up with them in ways they had likely seen coming. It is realistic and expected, but it ends in a satisfactory note of uncertainty. It is not necessarily bad, no. The continuation and the truth of it all is what places it beyond a standalone romantic work into something much more meaningful and enriching.

The verdict

I’m not going to claim to know whether being one way or the other leads to happier lives. Some happiness is found in comfort and some is found in excitement; some in control, and some in uncertainty. There are types of joy that feed off the unknown, and others that require stability and knowing. I love the Before trilogy because it forces us to confront these questions. I think the best thing you can do is always question why you are afraid and whether you’re okay being led by fear in a given situation. I am optimistic by nature and think I will always lean towards the urge to just experience, and see what happens. At this stage of my life, I feel like anything that gives you more ‘life’ is somehow enriching no matter what.

So, are we truly living when we’re stuck in stories, or are these stories a necessary escape for us to process and appreciate the present? I lean towards the latter. Most of all we need to be aware and understanding of ourselves: Sometimes living in the present is easy. But sometimes, something strikes us as too precious to bring into contact with reality, so we choose to keep it in a glass showcase: Here, a perfect story that once was, and so remained. It is then up to us to challenge that.