A random person on the internet yesterday described a song from the year of 1989 as a song he hated. I personally have only positive memories from that time and especially that song. This song triggered me to remember and be overwhelmed by all sorts of associations over a few hours. I got an idea in the afternoon to think if everything that had happened the past thirty years would only be a bad dream. That I could wake up thirty years back and all the trauma had not taken place. Have you ever felt that way?

I was in a bad accident when I was young, and occasionally, I have wondered if I could still be in a coma from that accident.

The only problem is that that the timeline of things (good and bad) that have happened - also in the 30+ years since - have not been impossible, nor even implausible, just different. Nothing breaks any questions of internal consistency, and other than sleep, there is no lost time.

I think we humans have too much wonder for things that are too small, simply because we have never thought of them before, and because we grossly reduce the size of our world to the things in our immediate and near-immediate experience. We're blindsided by the changes that are beyond the scope of our control as individuals.

Is it possible I'm still lying in a hospital bed at age 18 (or however much later)? Sure, but I'd say it's vanishingly unlikely.

And at this point, despite all the hurt I've experienced, if this were an illusion, I'd also lose my husband upon waking and that would something I could not bear.

Tyson



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2021 09:18AM by Tyson Dunn.

You could be in a very special circumstance if you are injured and asleep in a hospital or a nursing home. Agree, it can be worse if you wake up from the coma. As you write, the world you now see and value disappears in an instant. The loved one, gone, and you can find yourself in bad shape, unable to do things. It would be a disaster but you would have a life time of experiences in your dream comparing life to. But what would life be? No you are to reasonable and capable to be asleep.

It's interesting what you write about the big things. What we miss. What I see now in my life is a result that I would not have liked in case I had been told about it as a child. It is not that it is about big dreams that have not been fullfilled, but that it is mediocre and stupid in many ways. When I was little I thought people would become wiser as adult and I am probably dissatisfied with myself and think that many around me are worse than when they were children.

Like the TV series “Lost”?

Hi Cauda

You say: "What I see now in my life is a result that I would not have liked in case I had been told about it as a child. It is not that it is about big dreams that have not been fullfilled, but that it is mediocre and stupid in many ways. When I was little I thought people would become wiser as adult and I am probably dissatisfied with myself and think that many around me are worse than when they were children."

I think that is a feeling that many of us share with you.

Had an experience a couple of years ago. A how time flies experience..

Participated in a birthday party two years ago where the same company of people showed up that I had met earlier in the year of 1993 at another birthday party. I only met two of the participants during the period that elapsed between the two parties and to see how the whole group had aged, plus, with the time experience that was like it was an instant moment. It made my head spin a bit. The time perspective was just to much. My grand mother was there snubbing me, trying to make me stumble.

Then I thought, what is this all about? This infantile snubbing, so unworthy. What about my view on getting older? Could not see that wisdom really are being formed in adults.

In 100 years no one will care, except the curators of my museum. And the night watchmen.

How many night watchmen are required so that there are always at least two on duty, but all of them get two 'days' a week off? And what if none of them is Ben Stiller?!

It's been a long time since I visited a museum. The largest was the Omaha beach museum in Normandy. A lot of weapons and technical details. The beach itself was a monument, A timeless place. The waves and the sand. Hard to imagine the trafedy takimg place there. Was inside ome of the bunkers and someone from the allies had placed a note there om the wall. It was im the air, people there could feel it.

Just watched the limited series 'Robbery' on netflix about the Gardener Museum robbery in 1990 in Boston. Yes, the night watchmen question is highly intriguing.

Great show, monumental tragedy.

Childhood memories are as valuable as they are. That is the purpose of them. They just are. Not that it is nostalgic nonsense but that it was actually a positive and neurosis-free time. There were negative things, yes, but for me they have taken a slightly metaphysical form, as if childhood were some kind of now gone avalon, a garden.. There was faith in the future, I was not bitter as I am now from time to time, everyone a person could love in a family system lived and people had time for love. I sense it all is running out, What a mystery life is! How strange that memories are so sublime.

Speaking of bad dreams . . .


What if the Earth were populated with 8 billion of you?

In my case, things would still get done, but it would be all herky-jerky, and the competition to say something funny would drive half of me to the dark side! And within less than a month, you'd think it was the same world we inhabit right now, discombobulated at best, descending into chaotic madness/mad chaos, just like it sort of is right now, viewed on a macro-scale.

It's thoughts like this that make me wish I could have been an apostle, and just laid around all day, figuring out who I wanted in my Celestial Kingdom Harem of Righteous Rockettes.

I would not want to live in such a world. I know myself, it would be a disaster. Everything would very soon be sliding into a concrete-thinking mode of passivity.

The past two years feel like a bad dream. Maybe not early 2019 so much.

My folks' health and financial problems became a major issue for me in early 2017. There have been very few periods since then, even after the death of my father, where they haven't occupied a lot of my time and thought. The pandemic and the kabuki of stupidity (馬鹿な歌舞伎) just compounded matters.

Tyson



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2021 11:06AM by Tyson Dunn.