KD^3C^3 - 20260426 When you took a bite out of my spine
It was Earth Day this week. That’s the sort of day that I both like for existing and laugh about the commodification of. "Today is the day we care about earth. The rest of the days are for doing whatever." Obviously that’s not the point, but the earth is in trouble and making a day about it feels like a marketing stunt made up by companies who want to act like they’re doing the right thing without actually making significant meaningful changes.
I got a little nostalgic this week. Thinking back on the person I was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. Hank Green likes to point out that the person he was no longer exists, so he doesn’t try to do things in service of a person who isn’t around anymore. But I think That idea only goes so far. We do lots of things to commemorate the ones we’ve lost and I don’t see why that has to stop just because the person who is gone is our past self. For the most part I like who I used to be. And for the most part I like who I am now. But I do wonder if the person I used to be would like me. My opinions and worldview and priorities have changed a lot in that time, but it was always a gradual transition. If you were to plop (for example) College Freshman Kevin down in front of me, I don’t think he and I would see eye to eye on a lot of things.
But there has to be some continuity of self doesn’t there? I am who I am because of who I was. I made decisions without knowing the eventual outcome. I’m only as rational as I can be in the given moment, but that guy I used to be made the choices that put me here. It’s his fault, both for the bad things and just as much for the good. I can legitimately trace back where I am both emotionally and where I am physically located to decisions made either by me or those around me as early as 3rd grade.
In third grade my mom got laid off from her job as a software engineer (we called them computer programmers back in the day). She decided not to go back to work, which made it possible for us to decide to homeschool when I was in sixth grade and my needs were not being effectively met by the public school I was attending. Spending more time at home because of homeschooling, meant that I could more easily participate in my local community theater. I grew up in that theater, for certain values of growing up. I worked on lights and sound and built sets and occasionally acted. That exposed me to the idea of being involved in the theater full time, which led me to picking a college to attend where I could do that. Even though I went to college to be an engineer, I learned that wasn’t for me and I switched to Theater. I know I picked a school where I could change majors, even though I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, it absolutely factored into the decision of where to go. Because I was in the theater program, I met a grad student who said she really liked the playwriting professor at Miami University, not to mention that my favorite theater history professor knew the theatre faculty chair there. I moved to Ohio where I met my eventual partner in the same program. She eventually graduated and moved to Texas for her PHD. While we lived in Austin I got a job at the Apple Store (because of a guy I met in college!) which eventually became a trainer position, which eventually lead to my being able to eta more prestigious training job at another company who eventually laid me off. If I hadn’t gotten laid off when I did, I wouldn’t’ have gotten the job I have now, which lets me work remote which facilitated a move to The Woods where I live now, and we are in the earliest stages of building a house.
Which means there’s a guy outside walking around with a stick and a GPS tracker while I write this because my mom got laid off when I was in third grade.
But I could do a different path entirely though my personal history and still end up with a guy walking around with a stick and a gps tracker. It’s very easy to chart a path and assign cause & effect when looking back through time. It’s much harder on the other hand to predict what choices we make now will end up being responsible for in 10 or 20 years time. I don’t talk about my job much, but I work in an industry and at a company that significantly changes people’s lives. I cant talk about what my company does it in a public forum for regulatory reasons (really) but I have a small hand in changing the lives and futures of literally thousands of people on a regular basis (typically for the better, I hope). They will never know who I am, and I will never know where they end up or how things are different because of what I do behind a computer screen. It’s impossible to know.
But that’s always true. One of the lessons of the TV show The Good Place is that everything is too complicated. there’s only so much we can control and the outcomes of our choices are mostly invisible to us. I think that’s one reason multiverse stories have been popular. We like to think about the could-have-beens, the small things that could have been big things, and change our lives in completely unpredictable lives. What if you could see how those choices panned out differently? Wouldn’t it be cool to know?
So yeah, I do think I owe something to the past version of me who made the choices that, intentionally or not, put me where I am today. I owe him my thanks. I don’t love every choice he made, and I can’t make all of his dreams come true. But I can remember who he was. And I can also owe thanks to everyone else who mad their own little decisions that lead to this present moment. The entire world is an unknowable tapestry of accidental causes and unpredictable effects. We just have to do the best with where we find ourselves now, and hope the small choices we make benefit the world writ large.
I got a little nostalgic this week. Thinking back on the person I was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. Hank Green likes to point out that the person he was no longer exists, so he doesn’t try to do things in service of a person who isn’t around anymore. But I think That idea only goes so far. We do lots of things to commemorate the ones we’ve lost and I don’t see why that has to stop just because the person who is gone is our past self. For the most part I like who I used to be. And for the most part I like who I am now. But I do wonder if the person I used to be would like me. My opinions and worldview and priorities have changed a lot in that time, but it was always a gradual transition. If you were to plop (for example) College Freshman Kevin down in front of me, I don’t think he and I would see eye to eye on a lot of things.
But there has to be some continuity of self doesn’t there? I am who I am because of who I was. I made decisions without knowing the eventual outcome. I’m only as rational as I can be in the given moment, but that guy I used to be made the choices that put me here. It’s his fault, both for the bad things and just as much for the good. I can legitimately trace back where I am both emotionally and where I am physically located to decisions made either by me or those around me as early as 3rd grade.
In third grade my mom got laid off from her job as a software engineer (we called them computer programmers back in the day). She decided not to go back to work, which made it possible for us to decide to homeschool when I was in sixth grade and my needs were not being effectively met by the public school I was attending. Spending more time at home because of homeschooling, meant that I could more easily participate in my local community theater. I grew up in that theater, for certain values of growing up. I worked on lights and sound and built sets and occasionally acted. That exposed me to the idea of being involved in the theater full time, which led me to picking a college to attend where I could do that. Even though I went to college to be an engineer, I learned that wasn’t for me and I switched to Theater. I know I picked a school where I could change majors, even though I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, it absolutely factored into the decision of where to go. Because I was in the theater program, I met a grad student who said she really liked the playwriting professor at Miami University, not to mention that my favorite theater history professor knew the theatre faculty chair there. I moved to Ohio where I met my eventual partner in the same program. She eventually graduated and moved to Texas for her PHD. While we lived in Austin I got a job at the Apple Store (because of a guy I met in college!) which eventually became a trainer position, which eventually lead to my being able to eta more prestigious training job at another company who eventually laid me off. If I hadn’t gotten laid off when I did, I wouldn’t’ have gotten the job I have now, which lets me work remote which facilitated a move to The Woods where I live now, and we are in the earliest stages of building a house.
Which means there’s a guy outside walking around with a stick and a GPS tracker while I write this because my mom got laid off when I was in third grade.
But I could do a different path entirely though my personal history and still end up with a guy walking around with a stick and a gps tracker. It’s very easy to chart a path and assign cause & effect when looking back through time. It’s much harder on the other hand to predict what choices we make now will end up being responsible for in 10 or 20 years time. I don’t talk about my job much, but I work in an industry and at a company that significantly changes people’s lives. I cant talk about what my company does it in a public forum for regulatory reasons (really) but I have a small hand in changing the lives and futures of literally thousands of people on a regular basis (typically for the better, I hope). They will never know who I am, and I will never know where they end up or how things are different because of what I do behind a computer screen. It’s impossible to know.
But that’s always true. One of the lessons of the TV show The Good Place is that everything is too complicated. there’s only so much we can control and the outcomes of our choices are mostly invisible to us. I think that’s one reason multiverse stories have been popular. We like to think about the could-have-beens, the small things that could have been big things, and change our lives in completely unpredictable lives. What if you could see how those choices panned out differently? Wouldn’t it be cool to know?
So yeah, I do think I owe something to the past version of me who made the choices that, intentionally or not, put me where I am today. I owe him my thanks. I don’t love every choice he made, and I can’t make all of his dreams come true. But I can remember who he was. And I can also owe thanks to everyone else who mad their own little decisions that lead to this present moment. The entire world is an unknowable tapestry of accidental causes and unpredictable effects. We just have to do the best with where we find ourselves now, and hope the small choices we make benefit the world writ large.