Backward in time!

10th December 2023

Some times it is the emotions that control us, not the brain which usually does the work. But, how? What is emotion! The way the brain works is somewhat thinkable, a complex and sophisticated algorithm can generate the best action. But emotions are more than that! Probably that’s the reason, the question of different animals having different level of emotion, sometimes even no emotion, is of significance. Anyway, that’s probably a never-ending story for us to explore.

Emotions drive us to think about rewinding of life, sometimes want us to live at certain moments little longer, sometimes forever. Some very simple arguments are enough to scientifically rule out such a possibility, unless the concept of us living in one of the infinite possible universes is the reality. Whatever is the reality, I hate the idea of going back in time and living longer in the past moments of my life. Not that I had a boring life, rather because I fear a lot losing the experiences and the knowledges I have gained over the decades. The thought is so rigid that once I had a crazy dream, where I was dead and my spirit was not willing to leave the world because it feared another round of hard work it has to do in the next life to arrive at the current stage of its death. It’s crazy how brain creates such situations combining fragments of your knowledge in different domain. When I was a kid, I invested a lot of time reading stories about Hindu mythologies and philosophies of life, it’s surprising that these made me an atheist at a very early age in a very positive way. Aatma, that’s what the spirit is called in Hinduism, has no life or death. It keeps on changing bodies one after another in an eternal cycle till it gets Moksha, a transcendental freedom which makes you a part of some supreme power, probably nature. Thanks to my understanding of these I got this crazy dream!

Strong urge of going back in time, I guess, mostly relates to the feelings that you didn’t live some moments enough, or, sometimes not accepting the current version of events and the desperation to change the course of time. Somehow, I always able to convince myself that the decision I made is the best for me, or, at the least, the past version of me tried and did his best. This helps me with my way forward. I try my best with what I have got, without thinking about the imaginary possibilities those could have happened if I had taken another path. If the concept of parallel universe is true, probably I am living in those possibilities anyway, in a conceptual world which creates infinite copies of you and make everything not so rational, rather probabilistic!

The strong rational thought as the keeper of my knowledges and experiences sometimes loses its war with emotion, not so unexpected, probably that proves I am human not a machine. I think, I just get overwhelmed by the memories kept by my brain, a form of emergence rides in which we call emotion. Without memories can there be emotion! Intricate and vastness of memories are probably meant for the tinkling of emotions. So, yes, sometimes I do want to go back in time, stay a bit longer in those moments which I cherish the most, not frozen, just a little longer!