A mallard waddles into a restaurant. "Can I help you?" asks the
Maître D'. "Oh, yes (quack quack)" says the
mallard, "Do you
serve
duck?".
It's a
joke
(a mallard goes into a restaurant? ... do you
serveduck? ...
get it?).
But you wouldn't get it if you weren't
listening
with
suspended disbelief.
You wouldn't get it if you were like "Wait a minute: mallards don't
talk! And in any case,
why
would a mallard go into a restaurant?". To get the
joke
you'd have to
suspend disbelief
(at least temporarily) until you heard the punch line.
Life is a
play
with three
acts.
What follows is a brief synopsis of them (it
works
best to
listen
this with
suspended disbelief
until you hear the punch line).
We know (which is to say we're thrown to
believe)
we're this way, and we know we're
that way because thishappened
in the past, and because thathappened
in the past. Yet I assert the past has
nothing
to do with
who we are
in the
present,
and the past has
nothing
to do with
how
we
act
in the
present.
The past is
what happened.
You can't change the past, and you can't change who you
were in the past. With some analysis, you may be able to gain
a bit of insight into who you were being in the past. But even with
that insight, you can't change who you were in the past.
We like to think we can make up the
present
as we go along, and furthermore, that we can make it up any way we
like. But think about that for a moment: the
present
may not be as flexible as it can appear to be at first glance. The
present
(ie the current era,
act
two) must conform to certain fixed restrictions. For starters, it must
be a bridge between
act
one (the past) and
act
three
(the future into which we
live).
So
consider
the script for
act
two is already
written:
it must get you to
act
three. It has to make sense when
act
three opens. It has to be consistent with
act
three:
clearly
if you become a
world
class ballerina in
act
three, you can't have an
accident
and lose your legs in
act
two.
So
act
two may have a lot less to do with
act
one, and a lot more to do with
act
three than we typically have it. Also
consider
this:
whatever I can do to give myself access to
the future into which I
live,
allows me to
rewrite
that
future,
and consequently to
rewriteact
two.
Rewritingact
two effectively re-castshow
I experience the current era ie it effectively re-casts
how
the current era
shows up
for me.