The Anti Self

The central question posed in one the best book discussions we had many years ago i.e. over Night Train to Lisbon was: given that we can only live a small part of what there is in us -- what happens to the rest?  The same question, posed slightly differently, is at the heart of our focus article, "What If You Could Do It All Over?".

Would you want to do so? And, if so, would there be any conditions imposed for the new hypothetical arrangement, say different genes, other parents, another time in history? If the answer is no, then what makes you think the result would be any different from your current reality? The answer, of course, is the topic we've discussed twice before, most recently in MM 4/9/18 The Role Of Luck In Life ( MM 4/9/18) as we beheld the power of the fortuitous -- the force that reminds us of our common vulnerability to this invisible, otherwise undetectable, force that can be known only by its works.

Perhaps the whole subject is but a feckless indulgence that merely sucks the energy from the business of living in the present, like spending an entire existence in pursuit of some imagined afterlife marked by infinite grace. Yet, there it is again, that half-secret old ambition to perhaps leap out of the interminable self and into another skin, another life, a temporary release from the monotony of what we are -- from the life sentence of the mirror into a sort of anti self.

The journey into the thicket of luck and chance may serve as more than some empty philosophical exercise.  It invites a journey of retrospection in pursuit of understanding how it is that you became you. Withhold judgement as you reach back starting from the mists of your earliest years and discern the seminal events of your own history, all of those paths that were actually taken and the "but for" reasons they were. Now lay upon that scenario what your anti self might have done differently. Prepare thyself for a daunting adventure.

Or not. Maybe relax into your own "It's A Wonderful Life" and simply appreciate what the Stoics had to say about Amor Fati (Love of Fate).