Klexos: The Art of Dwelling on the Past

This is not an original anything.

I just wanted to share something beautiful.

Please play the below clip, and if you like, read the subtitles below it.

It is poetry.

"Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if you look closer, you notice that the ink never really dries on any of our experiences. They can change their meaning, the longer you look at them. Klexos. There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret, a kind of questioning that enriches the experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to dribble in on the years, and fill out the picture. And keep the memory alive. And not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.
Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again.
It can flip your greatest shame into the source of our greatest power. Or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons. Or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.
The past is still mostly a blank page, so you may be doomed to repeat it. But it is still worth looking into, if it brings you closer to the truth.
Maybe it's not so bad to dwell on the past. And muddle in the memories. To...stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas.

And remember that a work of art is never finished, it is simply abandoned."

There are good times, and bad. And then there are the getting-better times.

This post is about football.

No, this post is about Manchester United. It won't interest anyone who doesn't have an interest in football. So there.

I often see stats thrown up by television pundits and rival fans alike, about how we seem to be doing as bad, or sometimes even worse, than last season. This seems to be a great example of how stats never really show the full story.

The season David Moyes joined us, we had just won the premier league by an unexpectedly huge margin, been robbed of a great champions league run by an unfair red card, and had just lost to retirement, the greatest manager to have ever lived.

We were on a high. And then suddenly it seemed as if a part of us died. We were un-creative, toothless in attack, spineless in defense. But most of all, after one of the most successful periods ever, we were, as a club, in a place where few of us had ever seen ourselves - desperately clawing for a direction, a vision; we seemed to be lacking our basic identity - an identity which SAF had instilled in all of our minds (not only the players, but the supporter base as a whole).

It was a downward slope. Starting from a bad transfer window, going towards a bad pre-Christmas half, and ending with one of the worst ever spells our club has ever seen.
It was, to put it mildly, heart-breaking.

So why is this season better? Why, seemingly, are we more supportive of LVG than we were of Moyes?
Well, simply it's because even though we may have roughly the same results and points as last time, there seems to be a definite uplift in the direction our club is heading. It is - a record-breaking transfer window with some really good signings, a manager who speaks his mind rather than simply acknowledging the greatness of the club he inherits, and (dare I quote him) a philosophy (hopefully).

We had a good run, the last few matches; before Southampton exposed our undoubtedly important weaknesses. LVG seems like a good, nay, great manager, but he still has to earn my respect, as I'm sure SAF had to, back in the day, when I wasn't even born. But atleast to me, things seem to be going in the right direction, overall.

We are in a bad time, yes.

But we are moving towards the good times, slowly but surely.

God I love this club.