We are Imperfect Beings

Ours is a capricious language, with many tenses to see reality from multiple perspectives and it's a good thing we don't use them all to the fullest. Among all of them we speak of perfects and imperfects to refer to finished or unfinished actions or, to put it more technically, perfective and imperfective. People, unlike verbs, can only be imperfect, and thank goodness, because it would be boring to be finished. That wonderful tense called the preterite imperfect is to blame for everything. As a Spanish teacher my students always ask me why they say estudiaba en la Universidad and no estudié en la Universidad if I have already finished studying and it is a finished action. Now begins the beautiful part of imperfection.

This language of ours allows us to forget, remember and relive with a verb tense. Of course this is my interpretation of what the imperfect is and any reference text has a more scientific explanation, but I prefer to do it from a more sentimental point of view. The University era, among many others, holds unique moments, which we do not want to forget. The imperfect allows us to relive them and place ourselves mentally in that time. The indefinite is a closed door to the experience, a mere temporal datum to construct our biography. From outside the memory we talk about what happened between A and C; but it is thanks to the imperfect that B continues to exist in our mind.

What if we talk about the verb to begin with this difference between finished and unfinished? Curious contrast. We can mark the beginning of a war by saying cuando empezó la guerra ... however, why do we also say cuando empezaba la guerra? Although the indefinite can serve to move the action forward, in this case it is only a temporal moment isolated or simultaneous to others. Now, the imperfect in this tragic context has a sadder meaning than we think at first glance, because what comes to our mind is that times of mourning and battles are coming and it is something that is not punctual, but long-lasting. The curious thing comes when we talk about the antonym acabar because now it is the imperfect serves us to go back to the past and think about everything that happened, while the indefinite is a real closure of the conflict.

Not everything is so dramatic with this verb tense, as it allows us to remember what we once knew. ¿Dónde estaba tu casa? ¿Cuál era tu número de teléfono? These are common questions we ask in the present tense when our memory fails us. Thus, it is a way to remember what surrounds us and make it clear that we knew it, only that we are imperfect beings who forget. We not only bring to our memory addresses or numbers, but also times of our past that are long gone. Everyone was small, had a favorite toy or practiced some activity. Said in this indefinite and perfective way, it sounds sadder; better to say that éramos pequeños, teníamos un juguete favorito o practicábamos alguna actividad. In this way, that thing that used to happen and that life no longer lets happen, is still around. Unfortunately or fortunately, people also éramos, just like that, but thanks to the imperfect, we stay alive somewhere. In this case, it is better to avoid the imperfect and not to say era buena persona, let us impose the present to remember that we are alive, that somos. In short, the imperfect is a sad and beautiful time, of forgetting and remembering, a way of reliving what will never be. Let us accept then, that we are imperfect beings, but perfection means the end, and we still have a long way to go.