Something becomes an object at the moment of rupture, when it is no longer (however briefly) a part of the machine. This is why moments become so important to us. It is a kind of freedom. A moment is a chance to feel as though everything that is constantly carrying us along, seemingly against our will, has stopped. It is a chance to turn our lives into an object or image so that we can have the sense of being able to hold it, carry it, witness and examine what is really there. They are a void as well. We are never the same after an event that we would describe as “momentous.” A moment is a space in which the self can surface. There are dozens of examples within everyday life: an orgasm, someone’s touch, a scream, a certain smell, déjà vu, a life-changing decision, uncovering an object from one’s past, a death, nostalgia, pregnancy, being cut, a medical diagnosis, a knee on the back of a man’s neck, an event unfolding on the news you know the rest of the world is watching with you. These are all spaces in which we enter a void, we step out of the machinery, suddenly have time.
Moments expose us to what is real and true and essential. The better we are at being able to examine these ruptures, to hold them as objects for a little while longer and not forget what they revealed, the better we become at seeing the world as it really is. They can be distractions that divert our attention away from existentialism and suffering and make life tolerable—an “opiate of the masses”—or we can use them as a crutch to avoid improving the spaces between them. In this way, moments create wonderful things and powerful opportunities, but they can also destroy us, alter our lives entirely, and break down facades that reveal the things we have made ourselves ignorant to amid our own comfort, privilege, and passivity. The fact that “moments” are ruptures, that they wake us up, implies that some part of us is asleep in the time between them.
