Time and all that …

This is something I wrote while killing time in the metro today … was in a bit of a “mood” so this is not one of my typical techie posts. Feel free to skip. You have been warned! :)

Listening to Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone” read by James Franco. I pre-ordered it after watching “11.22.63”. From the book blurb I thought it would be more sci-fi or horror, but so far it’s been slow, thoughtful, and quite well-written (yes I know I have no right to say that, just that I expected the book to be something else and am pleasantly surprised by what it has turned out to be). I don’t know where the story is going yet… there seems to be one main strand with a few little strands strewn over so far and am guessing they all intersect at some point. I am only some 3 hours into a 16 hour book, so plenty of time left! 

Listening to this book reminded me of ‘time’ from “11.22.63” (same author) as well as “Slaughterhouse-Five” (same narrator). Both talk about ‘time’ differently but with the same idea. Both books treat ‘time’ as frozen/ pre-determined and “11.22.63” especially has this idea of time fighting back if you try and change it. I liked that and wish the book had elaborated more on it. 

If you view ‘time’ as frozen (i.e. this moment has already happened, the future has happened) then ‘time’ is ‘fate’. The question of changing your fate or trying to change your luck then becomes a case of trying to work against ‘time’. Which is sort of interesting coz then you can see ‘time’ working against your efforts. I hate that but also find it fascinating because that makes ‘time’ or ‘fate’ kind of sentient or purposeful (like they are really “out to get you” :p). 

A long time ago I had come across Dilbert comics author Scott Adams’ “affirmations” concept. Basically you think of something you want and keep repeating that idea as a sentence many times a day. For example: “I will get a score of 100/100 in my exam on Saturday”. Write this sentence down say every day morning for say 20 times. That’s affirmations. The exact details are variable – as in maybe you could type it down or just say aloud to yourself; or maybe no need to do it in the morning but just at some point during the day or at regular intervals through the day… you get the point. I had tried it many years ago and nothing happened. At that point I felt maybe I wasn’t doing it correctly and so left it (and in fact later on things kind of turned out to be opposite to what I had wished for – story of my life! :p). Didn’t think much of it and left it. 

Some months ago I came across this idea again from one of his books and also a few podcast interviews. Tried it again this time, with more earnestness, and this time I felt there was a sudden “kick back” from time in terms of changing things such that the things I were affirming for were no longer possible. And then I saw “11.22.63” and the concept of ‘time’ fighting back entered my mind and it’s been sitting there since then. I’ve tried a few other things similar to affirmations (both before and after watching “11.22.63”) and every time there’s been a kick back – often a strong one to completely derail what I was wishing for. These kind of events reaffirm my thinking that time is frozen, and if you try taking a blow torch to thaw it a bit, it fights back! :) I guess words like “frozen” and “blow torch” are not the right ones – it’s more like the path is bound with strings tied to other strings in a sort of self-correcting machine mechanism, and if you try to make changes the mechanism kicks in and sorts things out to ensure you stay on path.

It’s a depressing way of thinking, but everyone has a path set out, and there’s not much we can do to budge from it. And in the few instances where we do feel we’ve managed to change things, that’s probably coz that change itself was written in the path.