Temporal Causality and the Emotional Response in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

Those who have read me for a long time understand that I have long been obsessed with concepts of time travel. This is… more of an umbrella term for me. As I grew up, I didn’t realize that what I was really obsessed with was Temporal Concepts. I mean… time travel seemed like enough of a description, but as I re-analyze… it wasn’t really time travel but… knowledge… that I was obsessing over. And this is an interesting story about that.

NOTE: The specifics are approximations. If I say (as I know I will) 10 years old… that means “around 10 years old” because I don’t remember the EXACTS but the WHEREABOUTS.

Many of us on this site are the kind that have trouble going to bed because our thoughts keep us up at night. If you’re not one of the people like that… I assure you that you know someone who is. I… have always been that guy.

When I was 10 years old, I remember staying up at night considering possibilities of things that could never happen but were suitable “what ifs” of life. One of my favorites to consider was the following:

What if you were given a printout of all of the women you would date before finding your True Love? Citing length of relationship, when it started, and why it ended. I used to consider this a lot.

I would go back and forth on the pros and cons. The ethics, the practicality, the concepts of causality. Back and forth. Ultimately, as a child… I decided that it would not be worth it. Because the options were not palatable. Some of the questions/ideas that led me to that?
(1) What if the printout proved that one would NEVER meet their true love? Who would want to know that and how would that benefit someone?!
(2) What if the printout said “You met your true love and fucked it up” and showed you decades of failed miserable relationships after you met your true love. How do you know the printout isn’t a fixed future that WILL happen no matter what?
(3) What if the printout stated that you didn’t meet your true love until you were 90 years old? If you knew that you wouldn’t even MEET her until you were 90… how would you get through those years of misery and loneliness?
(4) What if the printout shows you that you met your true love when you were a child and were supposed to meet her again later; but she died in the meanwhile?

Those thoughts were quite common for me as a 10 year old… thinking about the ideas of understanding time, causality, relationships, and love.

THEN

I got to college. And I lost all hope of and belief in a “true love.” Instead I thought about things like simply “finding a wife” which was pretty much the same thoughts as thinking about “when I’m going to have sex.” Would I want to know that information? And that created an interesting existential philosophical quandary. If you KNEW when something was going to happen… and/or WITH WHOM… would that affect the reality? Those of you who saw last week’s Rick and Morty may understand because 19 year old me came to a similar realization. If you know what’s going to happen… and want it badly enough… you’re going to fuck it up!

And now?

Now I sit down to write this because… since life is always being written… I’m now essentially in a very interesting part of that original theoretical Print Out. One that would have made me… very depressed as a 10 year old. I don’t know if I believe in True Love at all. I don’t know if I’ll ever get re-married. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. But I am now certain that my 10 year old self came to the right conclusion. If I had known then that I was going to have sex with one woman in my 20s, marry her, and be slowly driven to misery and resentment for a decade… I mean… just think about what that story would have said to 10 year old me!?!

I write this because of course… these thoughts re-enter my brain. I wonder if I’m going to find someone. I wonder if someone is going to love me. I wonder if someone is going to want me. And while the world for this 36 year old is INCREDIBLY different from the world of that 10 year old.... the same questions and curiosities continue. And whereas back then… the desire to remain “ignorant” was made out of an ethical decision… the idea that knowing the future may change the future… I come to the same decision now but from a far more depressing perspective. I don’t want to know my romantic or sexual future. Because I don’t want to know if my future holds nothing. I don’t want to know if my future is “finds someone who likes him in his late 50s but fucks it up.”

If I have a curse… it is twofold. Faith and Corrupted Hope. I believe in God. No matter what. You can give me any and every argument you want. I am always going to believe in my Higher Power. On the other hand? I have a very twisted and (arguably tragic) sense of Hope. I always believe that I and others can do better… I believe that there is better in the world. I believe that I can still find someone to love. But… it is twisted. Corrupted. A… bent kind of hope. Because in this fashion… it is hope without faith. I have an intellectual hope but not an emotional or spiritual hope. While I believe that others can do better… while I believe that there is better in the world… I do not believe that humans are capable of it. While I believe that I can still find love, while I believe that I can still find sexual pleasure in this world… I am not certain that I am capable of it. So… that’s where I am at the present moment.