It wasn't long after we met that you told me you had dreamed your entire life as a child. Well, how did it turn out, I'd asked innocently. I don't remember, you'd said, with a prick of irritation in your voice, turning your head away.
At the time, I believed you.
I don't anymore.
I'd first heard of Ted Chiang on some NPR radio show back in 2013. I don't remember the story or conversation around it, but it must have struck me as significant because every time I'd go into a bookshop, I'd look for his book. Not once did I come across it until this past August. And I didn't just find the one book, but a second book and a movie adaptation to boot.
After reading the book, I tracked down the movie. I was curious how they turned such a mind-bending literary story into an academy award worthy film. There are few books and even fewer movies out there that have impacted me as much as this one. Spellbound and speechless, I watched it twice. I've not been able to stop thinking about the book or the movie since.
"The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available....We experience events in order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all." Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life
Not long ago while clearing out some old messages on my phone, I came across one of the last ones you ever sent me: Remember to thank yourself for seeking and finding you. I don't recall receiving this message at all, sent just after my last birthday. But seeing it now, a year later, I'm haunted by the thought that nothing is avoidable.
Much like language, the perception of time is slippery at best, dangerous at worst. It can work for you or against you, completely relative to your perspective. In Story of Your Life, the perception of time is tightly woven into language. It plays on the idea of linguistic relativity--that the language one speaks informs ones thoughts and how one perceives the world--how language shapes our reality. But Chiang's story pushes this theory one step further--language determines how one perceives time as well.
It's not lost on me that our story began at a place called the Catalyst and that one of the first tips you left me at the bar was a gift certificate to the very place where our story would end. Clearly, the clues were there the entire time. I just wasn't attuned to seeing them.
Perhaps things turned out the way they did not because of all the specific causes, but because they were kismet. All those unlikely miracles unfolded not because any specific event caused them, but because they were already interwoven into the underlying purpose that is the story of my life. And the story that was yours.
Of course, this opens the entire can of worms that free will is only an illusory byproduct of linear time. The book and movie touch on this. I will not.
Despite the fact I am human and hardwired to experience time as linear in this life (multidimensionality aside), I, like character Louise, do not believe in beginnings and endings. Life is far too mysterious and beautiful and interwoven to think it only travels in one direction, from point A to point B. But like Chiang points out, the universe is an ambiguous grammar, both views are valid regardless of context.
At the end of the movie, Louise tells us: "Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it and I welcome every moment of it."
If you knew your entire journey and where it would lead, would you want to change any of it? Or would you embrace it and welcome every moment of it?
