I watched a program on PBS/Nova last week that got me to thinking about fate. Basically, it explained that “TIME” is not necessarily progressing at a constant state, that instead, “TIME” is collection of micro-moments.
First of all, time is only relevant to the creatures that measure it – us. Dogs don’t give a crap about time, neither do hermit crabs. Why would they? Furthermore, it’s only fairly recent that we humans (or aliens, whatever we happen to be) have started measuring time with a device (sundial, clock, etc.).
In this Nova program, they talked about the concept that every single micro-moment of every single being that has ever or will ever exist has been recorded. Imagine a giant loaf of bread. Now imagine slicing a micro-slice of that bread and looking at that micro-second in “time” and seeing a representation of every moment recorded. Ok, now this is where it gets weird. Imagine that the moments recorded on one end of the bread slice are so far away from the moments on the other end that if they were to travel to the other side of the slice to meet another, it would not be the same time when they got there as to when they left. Thus, the slice would be diagonal instead of straight.
Ok, so that means that if a diagonal piece of bread can be sliced, then the moments that are hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of the moment on the other edge of the slice are already made!
What? Excuse me while I take a puff from my crack pipe.
So, does this mean that our future moments are pre-determined? That everything is fated? That’s a heavy concept.
Let’s pretend that this sliced-bread concept has been proven true. Does this mean that one should choose to just sit back and wait for things to happen to them, figuring “what will be, will be”? Or should they take a proactive approach to their lives, and participate wholeheartedly in making every micro-moment the best that it can be? Either way, it’s still the fated future. It won’t change anything, right?
I disagree. Although I don’t think it will change anything, I think that sitting back, accepting what you THINK is your fate is wrong. Who are you to know the future? You can’t. All you can know for certain is the present. And I know for a fact that every time that I have ever grabbed life by the horns, things have turned out ok. Did I change my fate? I may or may not have. It’s impossible to know because although time may be laid out like a piece of bread, all of us “beings” are only allowed to live in a micro-moment at a time.
We will never know if our actions changed our fate or not because by the time we get to that moment, it will already be there!
