SHORT "was is the saddest word of all" The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. If you step back and observe your reality, you may realize that only the next moment is truly "real." Our eyes are the most powerful tool we possess to perceive reality, but depending on the distance of our observations, our perception is always of the past. The past is accessible to us only through memories, and the future is no more than a probable prediction. As such, what we perceive as the present moment must actually be a past moment, and that is our reality, all we can know now, "was." “ he was the saddest word of all there is nothing else in the world its not despair until time its not even time until it was” (A-1-4) 334