I Saw You, From Behind a Tree

What if we only existed for an hour, quick rapid thoughts, every 6 minutes or so another decade gone by until the ripe old age of 100, each year being a mass of a few dozen moments, each second defined by a single memory, choosing each one, defining and selecting.

Did anybody else get caught by surprise when they became an adult?

Biological definitions are the easiest but they’re not descriptive enough, the simplest nonbiological definition I can think of is that a child has their major decisions made for them, so as a child you express your will in small ways, slowly developing an identity in a well worn system with hierarchies and theories, it can be difficult, scary, intimidating and hurtful but we’re told this is just our preparation for adulthood, that we’re gaining the skills and experiences we need to be adults, and so adulthood is mostly defined by the individual being in charge of the self, you decide what it is you will do. Which is us defining ourselves. The things we pick represent the things we want for ourselves, we don’t just appropriate them though we invest ourselves in them, we look further so as to define these things by us, so that it’s truly ours, and in that way we grow up, by choosing all of the abstractions that we want, whether it be a career, friends, music, hobbies, what have you, they’re just examples of yourself.

Isn’t it odd that it’s within us to enjoy ourselves? Not just that, but it’s expected that we enjoy ourselves, those that don’t enjoy themselves are treated as being defective, faulty, insane. It’s taken for granted but it’s such a rarity, we’re in a tiny, miniscule minority of biological creatures who also happen to think of things in emotional terms. I was talking to Alle today, we were discussing Sam and Kathryn, Sam’s happiness is totally dependent on Kathryn and so whilst they’re together he’s a wonderful person, when they’re apart, he’s just horrible. Personally I think it’s dangerous to base so much of your ‘character’ your ‘will’ on someone else, Alle then said "Who expects to end up with their first love anyway?"

It was a very distracting thought as it made me think back to Fiona, how, almost without a doubt that would have been the case, had things not turned out as they did, eventually she and I would’ve drifted apart, both so young and selfish, self absorbed, eventually we’d just be strangers who knew each other once, for a while some years ago. I don’t know if that’s sad or not. In a way, really, I’ve held onto her because we never got to see what would happen, so in my head and a few metres of shade there’s this girl who I go and visit. Allowing the premise that ghosts do exist, do they age? I wonder about it, I like to think so, but, it’s probably not true.

I wonder if she’d know me by my face or if I really do remember hers or whether I’ve made one up, that’s a terrible thing with death, in a way it is nature revoking an existence, for all intents and purposes, since there is no objective way to prove that they were ever here. Further it’s been demonstrated that our sense of time is relative and unique to us here on earth, so it’s only our unique biological qualities and our placement that gives us this sense of ‘time’, this sense of reality being a succession of moments, somewhere else to something else perhaps this elongated sense of time that we have is to them a single moment, all reality beginning and ending in the time it takes to click your fingers.

I don’t think that way, but, it’s not without it’s persuasion. Trying to grasp how many seemingly incidental things make up each moment is so very difficult, from the basics, things like atomic structure, quantum laws, physical laws, large scale complicated structures which appear to have physical laws that are unique to them, dimensional comprehension, time, energy, mass, elements, cellular structures, bacteria, viruses, enzymes, proteins, hereditary genetics, biological diversity, dna, metabolisms, photosynthesis, neural connections, muscles, bones, skin, blood, sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing, ecosystem, seasons, oceans, the self, memory, reproduction, emotions, culture, social groups, rituals, history, war, language, thought, philosophy, technology, the technological ages, on and on and on, all of these things and countless others that I’ve left out, all of them have had to of occurred and worked in exactly the way they do, in the exact order, with the same parameters, for this moment to exist as it does.

It all had to happen like that for me to be able to move my fingers on this keyboard right now and for your eyes to perceive light and then build an image of it in the mind as you read this, every person you’ve ever met, every moment of sleep, education, all of it, no matter how small or unnoticed, has accumulated into this moment, it’s such an enormous thing to understand, I honestly don’t think it’s possible, the weight of it would crush the mind, the order of magnitude being well outside of what one can grasp, we can’t think of that many things at once, which is probably a kindness in it’s own way.

Nothing need ever matter, nor exist. The bit that is scary I think is how the decision to take your own life is an immense power. She rejected it, this sense of reality, she made the decision to leave it, go outside of it, because it was this reality, this sequence, that hurt her, so much so that she chose nothingness over this, she chose the most basic and inherent unknown, confident in her decision, isn’t that terrifying? Imagine that sense of resolution, it sounds insane because reason doesn’t lend itself to it, but I think more than insane, it’s intimidating. So I don’t think she’s insane, she is selfish, was, I suppose, got to get my tenses right, selfish, short sighted, stupid, but she was powerful, she did the most powerful thing she could, and she hurt everyone around her in doing so, but maybe that’s our problem, I mean, aren’t we taught to respect the decisions of others and especially of those we love?

Are we allowed to choose which decisions we like or is that unfair to others? Does that betray the reasoning? From the little things like the semi-decisions of a child, to the adult defining decisions such as which job, people or country you select to surround yourself with. As a child, one day we are confronted by a moment where we have to make a decision for ourselves with the weight of responsibility resting solely on our shoulders, it is the intrinsic, common, coming of age moment.

In that sense, she was the first of I and my peers to become an adult, but because of the nature of her very adult decision, she will always be remembered as a child.