Friday, October 9, 2009

A Montana Musing

Shane Carruth has this theory.

Now hang with me on this one:

Let's say it were hypothetically possible to go back in time. As in, enter a box or machine or whatever at point "A" and re-emerge at point "B".

Now, point B just happens to exist in what we call yesterday, or last week, or maybe that day you really screwed your life over. And now you want to go back in this box starting at point A, the aftermath, to get out again at point B.

I call Do-over.

So you sit in this box, and you're being transported from point A to point B. But it's not instantaneous, like in the movies. If you want to go "back" 48 hours, then you have to sit in the box for...48 hours. It's a 1-for-1 relationship, Shane says. There is a cost for going back.

And here's the tricky thing. When you get to point B...well, "you're" already there. If you truly want to re-live that moment, change something, you're going to have to dispose of the variable. And he's "you".

Folks who dwell in sci fi will notice the appearance of the paradox. What happens if you meet yourself? Will the universe cave in? Will time cease to have meaning? No, says Shane, probably the only thing you're really going to screw up is your sanity and the lives of people you choose to surround yourself with. Anyway, he made a movie about this, called Primer. It won Sundance. Netflix it.

See, people fantasize about time travel thinking they can go back and change something they don't like. Nostalgia to the extreme. But even time travel, following this logic, doesn't "change" anything. Traveling...switching locations, switching times...doesn't change anything. What happens somewhere never stays there - you always take it with you.

I've often wondered why I travel, why it makes me come alive like little else can. So the reason I bring all this up, is while I haven't necessarily time-traveled (other than forwards at a slightly relativistic time-dilated rate having driven so far at high speeds), I did get into this Chevy Cobalt-sized box yesterday morning. 9 1/2 hours later, I exited this box almost exactly 650 miles away from my previous location.

So here I am...hoping for inspiration, hoping for change, hoping for insights. And I get them. I think I used to travel because I wanted to escape. I wanted to run away, to become someone else, to start over.

But up here in this chilled mountain air, I'm thinking a bit differently. See, now I'm thinking that maybe I travel because I know who I am. And every so often, I must allow myself to be transported somewhere unfamiliar to see myself, as I have become, from the outside-in. To search fearlessly within that soul of mine with the searchlight of Truth framed in self-denial and the relentless slap-you-across-the-face passion of Eternal יהוה.

To meet myself, and to converse with him. But this version of me doesn't get disposed of...I get to take him with me.

No comments: