People generally perceive time as a path or a pipe.. something that we traverse. We enter life at one end and we exit it at the other. It loops around and takes turns, but it nevertheless has a beginning and an end. We have no idea how long the path is because we can’t see around the corners. What’s before the beginning and after the end is an infinite oblivion from the perspective of the traverser. This way of perceiving time is good and necessary — it aids our ability to survive and evolve in our three dimensions.
Have you read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five?
There’s a race of aliens called the Tralfamadorians. They exist in four dimensions and can therefore see all of time all at once, just as we “might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains.” When someone dies, they simply see that person in a rough state of being at that particular point in time, but happy and healthy at other points in time. “So it goes,” they say. But we can’t see all of time all at once. We can’t see the end of the pipe and we certainly can’t know where it starts before we even exist.
That book has influenced my general philosophy more than probably any other. Whenever I feel especially reflective or philosophical, I try to view time as a flat circle — but not in a depressing Nietzschean sense. Perhaps a flat plane is a better analogy. There is no traversing. There is no beginning or end. We exist permanently at different points in time simultaneously. We just don’t have the tools to actively perceive it that way. We perceive reality chronologically and therefore as fleeting — with our electrical signals bouncing between flesh and bone that simply come together then fall apart.
Everything that happened in (what we perceive as) the past not only did happen but is happening. The past version of you is experiencing it in past you’s present. You’re not there right now — as you perceive it — but there is a there there. The same can be said of the future. But rather than believe in fatalism like the Tralfamadorians — believing consequently that there’s no such thing as freewill — I like to believe that every possible reality exists. For example, there’s an infinitesimally minor variant reality where I’m wearing a yellow shirt in Copenhagen right now instead of a white shirt in Amsterdam. We still have freewill. We can still chose which direction to walk. It’s just that we can only exist in one of those realities... but which reality that happens to be is not pre-ordained. Only the Avengers can travel to all realities.. but at great cost.
So…
#1 We can’t see around corners like the Tralfamadorians.
#2 We can’t bounce around realities like the Avengers.
I think it’s helpful to visualize your life as an expansive plane of corridors. Don’t think about the end because there really isn’t one. Instead, open as many doors as you can and make your life as interesting as possible. Give the past and future versions of you a lot to experience... because those experiences will keep happening, for all “time”.
There’s no point in waiting for another time to do what you want because time doesn’t really exist. It’s just your perception. Some version of you is actually doing the things you want already — at some point in time in some reality — you just can’t perceive it. Again, you’re not there, but there is a there there. So fuck the fourth dimension, frankly, and do what you want right now — in three dimensions. You can’t see around corners.
Pull your dreams and desires forward. Think of it as risk management.
You might be dead tomorrow.
So it goes.
Wow! I needed this today. Thank you!