The implications of changing your mind in a world without time travel.

Today on the list of things that crowd my brain instead of null pointer references and expression trees is the validity of a question you can ask.

Rilke said that you should live the questions, and eventually live your way into the answer.

But what if one day you realize* that you weren't asking the right questions all along?
(*By "realize" here I can only mean decide. So no, I don't come to some big realization that the answers and goals I have been so far living towards are somehow wrong. I simply decide to change my mind. After all, a girl can change her mind even more often than she changes her shoes, whose supply is not infinite, and you will eventually have to come across a pair you have already worn. No, changing your mind is free, especially if it is that time of the month, or if that time of the month is looming sometime in the vague future, or it if you are stressed, or if it is Tuesday - you catch my drift.)

So you decide one day that the questions you have been trying to answer weren't the right questions to ask after all. Is there a way to go back, retroactively, and live your way into an answer you were never aiming for?

I still believe that when you ask a question, at some point you will come to realize that you have had the answer all along. But I think that comes from struggling with that question, being open to cues in your environment that would help you answer that question, and structuring your choices based on who you were at the time. Then, if, putting it bluntly, you decide that you have made a mistake, by asking one "what if" question and attempting to live your way into that answer, when really, you should have been asking, "what if NOT," there is NO way to go back and relive that alternate path!

Because you can really only project "what if" questions into the future, and after you live it, realize that it is the only way it could have been. That is the only way to handle "what if'ing" without being extremely, unnecessarily cruel to yourself. OF COURSE it couldn't have been different, if it is the way it is! If things were different, nothing would be the way that it is now, so NOTHING could have been different.

Therefore, if you think that you asked an incorrect question in the past, all you can really do is decide which question you want to project into the future. 

On growing up.

I had a sort of mental health day today. It went like skipping class so I could attend to the ten much more pressing things I had to do that were continually put off in favor of problem sets that had actual DEADLINES. Oh, priorities. I wanted to clear my to-do list but realized that the really pressing things weren't even on the whiteboard because I haven't had time to put them down. Well, it's done now!

Anyway, a relaxing morning and bike-free afternoon is putting me in a thoughtful mood. I am watching people around me make the transition to adulthood in a way that feels so alien and light years away, yet the fact that people my age are having these profound milestones with careers and families means that at some point, it is waiting for me too. Maybe that is what being an adult is - being continuously thrown off equilibrium as the people in your life disperse more and more with respect to where they are in their lives. (I am totally picturing a spreading plume when I write the word disperse.) Anyway, while I can delay growing up by living in a grad dorm and avoiding children and gainful employment, I thought that I would be older when I KNEW other people who were "adults."

But let's step back and take a look at that word for a minute. There are so many times this year when I had the sinking realization that this is it,

I am more or less on my own,
I have been doing the feeding myself and cleaning up after myself, making good life decisions (debatable), and not being a total shit show for a few years now. I've had laundry, bills, chores, to-do lists, safe and dangerous situations to choose between, vitamins to take and sunscreen to apply. Yet despite that fact, I am still a complete and utter SHIT SHOW.

But guess what?! So is everyone else. That's right, everyone who is doing this in-your-20's thing doesn't have a single clue. And I'm starting to understand that it doesn't really get better in your 30's either. No, there is no milestone in life when suddenly, you wake up on top of your shit.

When I was in grade school (ok, and college), being 20 sounded so OLD. There were things I put off thinking about because I knew I would have to think about them "in my 20's." Wearing business professional clothes. Worrying about wrinkles. Not painting your nails different colors. But none of that happened!

Let me reiterate.

Nobody around us has a single clue.

YOU NEVER REALLY FIGURE IT OUT. Well, maybe your whole life will flash before you until you die, but until then, I am never going to wake up one morning with a career, family, and picket fence lined up and with the knowledge that this is the life I have been working towards.

No, like Rilke said, you spend your whole way living the questions, hoping that someday, you will live your way into the answers.

This book will change your life even if you don't let it.
(Side note: I stumbled upon it in a small shop in New Hope, PA, on a sunny day when I planned neither to buy a prom dress or be introduced to a whole new world of poetry, introspection, and revelation. Every time I read this book, I learn something new about life and myself.)

Except you never get the answers in real time! But every once in a while, you look back and realize that YOU HAD THE ANSWERS ALL ALONG, just not in a way that you could have processed or understood at that time.

I remember struggling with a really tough life decision a couple of years ago, calling my mom, and her saying "I think you already have all the information that you need to make this decision. You just need to think about it."

This freaks me out because we are so profoundly underestimating our potential. Whatever answers you need, whatever you are struggling to extract from life, you already possess.  It's kind of like.. you can see something coming, but only in retrospect. When you look back, all those silly things that weren't signs and didn't mean anything are suddenly signs to whatever event followed. So I wonder if they really exist, or if our brain constructs them after the fact? Kind of like a dream that your brain paints right before you wake up to illustrate a noise that you hear when waking up.

*~*~*~*~*

I need to stop right now and conserve whatever brain power remains to find out why my dimensionless time data is not matching the scale of the Fischer function.

In summary:
-All adults are shit shows
-You never figure anything out.
-But that's only because you already know everything (you just can't use it at the time.)

Good night!!!