It's about time...

14 April 1905 (8): "Suppose time is a circle..."

In this chapter, most people aren't aware that "they will live their lives over" and that everything they do "will be repeated again and again, exactly as before." But those who are aware of the nature of time are the ones who lead miserable lives. Why?

Knowing, in this circumstance especially, can be such a daunting part of life. Knowledge can be so unappealing because it requires so much from the bearer, especially the need to act upon that knowledge. The people who are aware of the nature of time in Einstein’s Dreams lead miserable lives because they possess crucial knowledge to the cities in which they live, yet neither can they share this knowledge with anyone else nor can they act upon the knowledge that is out of their hands.

Lightman’s characters are not so much depressed about their present situation as they are struggling to accept the idea that things have happened before, and will happen again a million times over. Lightman writes, “they sense that their misjudgments and wrong deeds and bad luck have all taken place in the previous loop of time. In the dead of night these cursed citizens wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest, stricken with the knowledge that they cannot change a single action, a single gesture” (8-9). This example clearly provides proof that his characters do suffer from anxiety, but that is the least of their problems; these characters are more concerned about the aspect of their lives that they cannot change – “the misjudgments and wrong deeds.” A great concern for these characters is the fact that they have never had the control to take charge of their actions. Of course, they are able to make choices, but aren’t all these choices rooted in the past? These characters, knowledgeable that all of the events occurring now have already occurred in the past an infinite amount of times (and will occur in the future indefinitely), grapple with the inability to control their own actions. In lacking that control of their own actions, they lack the ability to take hold of their own life, discouraging them to want to live.