But in day-to-day life, many experiences are more one than the other; for the painter, the painting is more made than given; for a rider, the horse is more given than made. It is true that the love of the rider for the horse and the feeling of the ride are "made" things, but they are quite inextricable from the very "given" horse, because one loves and rides this horse, no other. The painting derives from experiences of the artists's that may have been reworked, rencontextualized, and more fully imagined, but that nevertheless have a given reality as well; that is why, for the painter if not for the viewer, the art always exists in the context of the given events of the painter's life.

But even so, the painting remains more made than given, and the horse is more given than made. The import of Winnicott's paradox is not that the contributions of our constructions and given reality are always equal, but that both are always present and inextricable from one another. It does not violate the terms of the paradox to observe that the given and the made are also a dialectic.

To accept that experience is made in the present is to accept that other experience was made in the past. The givens in experience are not timeless essences; they themselves had to be constructed, once upon a time. And if an organized experience becomes part of a later moment, the organization it brings into that later moment will no longer be entirely appropriate. It will need to be recontextualized -- and recontexualization is really just another word for yet another episode of organization, or reinterpretation. Every moment is made anew, although the experiences of moments past have a very great deal to do with what the experience of each present moment will be.