Fitty Fitty Bang Bang

22 May 1905 (65)

"Dawn. A salmon fog floats through the city, carried on the breath of the river."

This is a world of changed plans because time stops and starts in fits. At the end of the chapter, the narrator asks a series of questions, which you should try to answer:

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time?

Those who have seen the future and live only one life?

Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life?

Or those who deny the future and live two lives?

The world of fitful time – marked not only by spontaneity but also by slow, waiting period – is a very dangerous place for all of those who live in it. Some people have seen their future and thus only live one life, but they suffer from monotony, boredom, and lack of suspense. Others wait to live their lives because they have not seen their futures, creating uncertainty, fear, and too much suspense in their lives. Still, others deny their future and end up living two lives, creating great periods of excitement and later periods of harsh acceptance. All of these people have unfortunate lives, yet one of these types of people does fare better in this world of fitful time.

While this chapter seems to be secluded only to three worlds of fitful time, it implicitly focuses on whether or not people have any prescience for their future. The people who know their future can choose one of two paths – living their life, or choosing to deny it. And the people who do not know their future can only pick one – waiting. But, the greater question may be, how and why do certain people know their futures while others do not? Is it through fate and random chance? Are certain people not ready to receive their future? Are certain people more responsible with their fates? We do not know what the average age or how young one can receive their future, which shows us that there is no definitive, physical age at which someone must receive their fate. In addition, it is clear that both people that know their fates end up choosing one of two tragic paths to follow. Either way, knowing seems to be depressing and not worth knowing. Yet, is not knowing better? Not knowing prevents any type of immediate decisions, and thus decreases the amount of fitful decisions. So, the people who fare best in this world are the ones who suffer the least from fitful decisions.

This I Believe...

Because I believe in other people and their consciences, I believe in mistakes and our ability to rectify our errors. I believe that people grow and develop into adolescents and then adults not only by the passage of time, but also through the mistakes made during that passage. I believe that we each make the right mistakes, which lead us to where we are today.

When sitting in my room and trying to think about what I believe, I was totally clueless. I sat for a long while, carefully searching through the files in my mind about different things in which I believe. Thankfully, my family called me to come eat dinner before I myself turned into a vegetable. I walked up to the kitchen where everyone else was and there it sat – a lonely yellow and watery, swollen thing on the kitchen table. "It's a quiche," my mother enthusiastically announced. "Oh, wow," I said, both with thanks and with sheer confusion and astonishment. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to deny that I do like eggs and that I do like cheese and that I do like any combination of the two. However, I do not like watery, egg-y, cheesy mess mixed together with a couple of soggy vegetables. I sat there, though, politely eating the meal that my mother had decided to make herself after weeks of her only making processed foods from boxes; this was her first attempt in a long while to make something “out-of-the-box." However, I could hardly close my mouth after I put the puffy concoction in it. In that instant, I knew that I no longer had to think about what I believed – mistakes happen. Fortunately, mistakes are a good thing – they allow us to see what we have done incorrectly. In this instance, my mother would hopefully realize that, while she tried her hardest to make a complete meal for us, she still needs a little practice, eventually aiding her in creating a elegant four-course meal. In addition, as humans, we have full knowledge of how we should correct these actions that are displeasing to others or morally unjust.

While this issue encompasses more than a soggy quiche, any mistake is not too large or too small. From the very beginning of our lives, we “mistakenly” fall down when we try to walk, “mistakenly” wet our pants during our toddler stage, “mistakenly” forget that we aren’t supposed to be rude to adults as children, “mistakenly” forget to call our parents when we go out to a party, “mistakenly” forget to make thoughtful decisions in college, and “mistakenly” forget that there is real life even after college. However, each of these mistakes – and all of the other ones that occur every day – connect us all because each of us inevitably err. What makes each of us different, though, is how we respond to our mistakes. I believe that while people do make mistakes, these mistakes transform us into individuals.

Why can't my life end in, oh say, two minutes?

In the world above, the people "with unnatural smiles" are those who spend their time trying to rectify their errors. Why wouldn't they be the most content instead?

As humans with full consciences, we find it quite hard to go about our days with the knowledge that we have done something wrong; we find it almost impossible to forget the fact that we said this horrible thing about a friend, or that we decided to rub our fortunes in others’ faces. (But, we hardly ever give up the chance to do either of those two). Like it or not, our past actions haunt us throughout the day, like pesky mosquitoes biting on every spare inch of our bodies on a hot summer afternoon. No matter how many mosquitoes at which you swat and kill, though, they continue to come back, more ravenous than before.

The people with the “unnatural smiles” attempt to rectify their moral status before they die. These people want to apologize to the ones that they have hurt and derided so that they can feel content before they die.

No matter whether you believe in a higher power or not, I do not think that it is possible to live life without regard to others’ feelings and to humanity itself. No sane person can go through their life flippantly disregarding people around them. We all have a conscience imbedded in us, and there is not side-stepping around that; we know what is right, we know what is wrong. The problem, though, is having the courage to deal with those problems. And, while Lightman says that these smiles are “unnatural,” for some reason, I don’t think that they are. I don’t think that these people only (if at all) apologize for eternal retribution or for the hopes that they can exist peacefully in the afterlife; these people apologize because it is the right thing to do, and they themselves know that deep down in their souls.

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.