(This is from my Facebook page. An interesting back,and forth between my self, and my pal Calvin.)
So you wrote a novel, a book of short stories, or you contributed to the journalistic World, or perhaps you shared a part of yourself through poetry; however, wrote, contributed and shared are all past tense, so what do you write, contribute and share now?
You were a novelist while you wrote that novel. You were a writer while you wrote that book of short stories. You were a journalist while you created that article. You were a poet while you gave birth to that poem.
Jane used to fly an airplane and Dick used to build airplanes, but now neither, any longer does either, so do they still call themselves a pilot and a mechanic/engineer without including "was," or "used to be"?
Sidney Smith
You are who you are that includes who you were. That's why we call ex-senators "senator". I was an engineer...I am an Engineer. I still have the skills so if I were a pilot I could fly if suddenly I had to. The writer writes the singer sings even if they haven't in 20 years. They are still who they were as well as what they have become.
As J.M.Barrie the author of "Peter Pan" said. "We remain the same person. Our lives are like a house in which we move from room to room as we get older. However we remain in that same house, and know each room intimately."
Calvin Tatsey
Good response, Sidney and as always, I respect, value and honor your opinion, as much as I do those of any other intelligent friend, but I am not looking to be convinced. I am looking to share a fact, which is that someone either does and is, or does not and is not; however, as I'm viewing it I am thinking that the sharing and having others understand that fact is hard to do and so I will assume a different route and attempt to validate my personal inference(s) via a question immediately following this response.
Calvin Tatsey Can a millionaire who has lost all of his money and is now penniless still call himself a millionaire, as in, “I am a millionaire,” or would it be more appropriate to say, “I was/used to be a millionaire”?
I rest my (proven) case, Cuz.
Sidney Smith
Good point. However being wealthy in not a learned profession or an innate talent. As say being artistically mechanically spiritually emphatically creative. That line Joseph Cotton gives in "Citizen Kane". "...anybody can make money. If money's all you wanna make." Becoming rich not a creative act. It's more an obsession like drug addiction. I think that was Mr. Cotton's point.
However your point...is the penniless ex-rich person still rich.
Well as I illustrated being rich in not in the same category as other ways of life. We could go in circles here. I think we need to define what's what.
What is the definition of a way of life. Is that ex-millionaire the same as a carpenter writer subway motorman...I say no. Because the artists, and crafts people will 'never' lose their skills. Except by perhaps a mental aliment.
The rich person's wealth are things like shoes or other physical objects. A whole other reality. They are 'not' their shoes. They are 'not' their wealth. The carpenter remains a carpenter regardless if he's working or not. Same with all others with a calling...they 'never' ever lose it. Wealth can be lost over night.
Calvin Tatsey
A verb, a state of being, perhaps currently active, semi-active, seldom-active, no longer active or a past practitioner, but are you if you don’t, or are you if you do?
It’s not in the possessing, but in the possessing and also in the current use of the possession that makes someone who-and-what they are. Possessing is not doing. Writing is doing, wrote is already done.
Are you creating that, or did you create that? I write; I wrote. I see; I saw. I am; I was, etc.,.
Sidney Smith
I believe we have now entered the mystical...or were we always here. All of our earthly needs senses gone. stripped away. So that now we See.
Calvin Tatsey
LOL! Yep, Sidney I believe you're right.
Stay Tuned.
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