Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded

Host: The sunlight had begun to fade, slipping through the narrow alleyway like a shy guest leaving a party too early. In a corner café overlooking the river, the air was thick with the smell of roasted beans and the faint hum of forgotten songs playing from an old speaker.

Jeeny sat by the window, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea, the steam coiling upward like a fragile memory trying to return. Across from her, Jack leaned back, his chair creaking under the weight of his restless body. His eyes, grey and cold as steel, watched the slow movement of boats below — indifferent, yet haunted.

The sky outside had begun to turn the color of old film, a quiet melancholy spreading through the room like a ghost from another time.

Jeeny: “Samuel Alexander once wrote, ‘Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience.’”

Jack: “Huh.” (He exhaled smoke toward the window.) “Sounds like something philosophers say when they’ve got too much time and too little to do.”

Jeeny: “No. It’s about the way we live between what we remember and what we expect. About how both are more than just pictures in our heads — they shape us, Jack.”

Host: The light flickered from a passing car, slicing across their faces — Jeeny’s calm, Jack’s tense.

Jack: “Shape us? They trap us, Jeeny. Memories tie us to what’s gone. Expectations chain us to what hasn’t come yet. And everyone calls that living. But it’s not — it’s a kind of waiting room between two illusions.”

Jeeny: “Then what is living, Jack?”

Jack: “Now. This moment. This cup of coffee, this rain, this heartbeat. Everything else is fiction.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “And yet, even that moment only makes sense because of what came before and what might come after. Without memory, it’s empty. Without expectation, it’s aimless.”

Host: The rain began to fall — soft, persistent — drops tapping against the window like the slow ticking of time itself. Jack watched the rivulets run down the glass, distorting the reflections of passing people into fleeting echoes.

Jack: “I think memories lie. You remember things not as they were, but as you need them to be. You paint over the cracks with nostalgia. Expectation is the same — a hopeful lie we tell ourselves to keep moving. Both are just tricks the mind plays to make reality tolerable.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they’re not tricks. Maybe they’re bridges. Think about it — memory connects you to what made you human. Expectation connects you to what might make you more. Without them, you’re just drifting, Jack.”

Jack: “Drifting sounds peaceful. No anchors, no promises.”

Jeeny: “No meaning.”

Host: Her voice was soft, but it cut through the air like a blade through silk. Jack’s jaw clenched — not in anger, but in resistance.

Jack: “Meaning is overrated. Look around. People drown themselves in expectation — promotions, relationships, the perfect life. And when it doesn’t come, they fall apart. I’ve seen it. My old business partner used to plan his future like it was an equation — every move calculated. Then the market crashed. He lost everything. And he couldn’t exist without the image of what he thought his life would be. Expectation didn’t help him, Jeeny. It destroyed him.”

Jeeny: “And memory?”

Jack: (after a pause) “Memory was worse. He couldn’t stop reliving the days when everything worked. He’d sit in his apartment, talking about the deals he used to close, the dinners he used to host. He built a shrine to his own past.”

Jeeny: “So it wasn’t memory or expectation that ruined him. It was his refusal to let them evolve. He turned them into prisons instead of paths.”

Jack: “Poetic. But try telling that to a man who’s lost everything.”

Jeeny: “I have. My mother, after my father died — she lived in two places at once: the past and the future. She’d remember his voice so vividly that it was as if he were still sitting beside her. And she’d still expect him to walk through the door. It hurt, yes, but it kept her alive. Her grief was alive because her love was alive.”

Host: The light dimmed further; a lamp over their table flickered, casting long shadows that danced across the floor. The café was almost empty now. A waiter wiped the counter, his movements slow and thoughtful. The sound of the rain grew heavier — a rhythmic heartbeat against the world’s silence.

Jack: “So you’re saying memories and expectations create us?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because they’re not just reflections. They’re acts of creation. When you remember something, you rebuild it, reshape it. You’re not just looking back — you’re reimagining who you were. And when you expect something, you’re not just dreaming. You’re sketching the blueprint of who you might become.”

Jack: “That sounds dangerously close to fantasy.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we need a bit of fantasy to survive reality. Isn’t that what art is? Or love? Or even regret?”

Host: Jack’s eyes drifted to the window, where the streetlights blurred into orbs of gold. His reflection looked older, softer — a man seeing the cracks beneath his own certainty.

Jack: “You know, sometimes I think memories are heavier than time. They carry too much weight. And expectations… they’re like smoke. You reach for them, and they vanish.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s why we need both. One teaches us how to carry; the other teaches us how to reach.”

Jack: (laughs quietly) “You always have a way of making contradictions sound holy.”

Jeeny: “Because life is a contradiction. You can’t escape it — only balance it.”

Jack: “So, if both memory and expectation are more than images — what are they, Jeeny?”

Jeeny: “They’re extensions of our being. Memory is our past self trying to speak again. Expectation is our future self calling us forward. The present is just the meeting point — the conversation between them.”

Host: The rain eased, thinning into a mist that softened the city’s lights. A couple walked past the window, hands intertwined, their laughter faint but unmistakable.

Jack: “You make it sound almost… sacred.”

Jeeny: “It is. Every time you remember, you resurrect a piece of yourself. Every time you expect, you give birth to another. That’s creation — not just of thought, but of being.”

Jack: “So I’m a thousand versions of myself, then. One built from what I recall, one chasing what I desire.”

Jeeny: “And both are true. You’re not the man you were yesterday, and you’re not yet the man you’ll be tomorrow. You’re the tension between the two.”

Host: A faint smile crossed Jack’s face, like a cloud breaking just enough to let the sunlight through.

Jack: “Maybe Alexander was right, then. Maybe memories and expectations aren’t illusions after all. Maybe they’re… dialogue. Between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Jack: “And what about the moments when neither speak? When the past is too painful to remember and the future too dark to expect?”

Jeeny: “Then you listen. Because even silence is part of the conversation.”

Host: The café had grown still. Only the low murmur of the river outside and the soft clinking of cups remained. The world, for a brief instant, seemed to hold its breath.

Jack looked at Jeeny — really looked — and something in his eyes shifted: not defeat, not surrender, but recognition.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny… I used to think the past was something to escape, and the future something to chase. But maybe both were trying to teach me to stand still — right here.”

Jeeny: “That’s where both of them meet, Jack. In stillness. In now.”

Host: Outside, the rain had stopped entirely. The sky, freshly washed, gleamed with faint stars struggling to pierce the clouds. The river below shimmered like a moving mirror, reflecting not just the city’s lights, but something quieter — the pulse of time itself.

The two sat in the glow of the lamp, silent but connected, as if the past, present, and future had briefly collapsed into one breath.

And in that breath, Alexander’s words lived — that expectations and memories are not merely images, but the living architecture of the human soul, where all time folds into consciousness, and where every moment becomes infinite.