Backwards

Editor's note: After you read this and comment (hint hint) don't forget to scroll down and look at the post just previous to this one.


I like to know answers. I like to know endings. I like to figure out how a movie will end, how a book will sum it all up, how a problem will be resolved, the punch-line of a joke even.

Why do I like all of these? Because I like to have some sense of control over the unknown.

Ha ha, don’t we all?

Surprises are great, wonderful, and exciting, but often we want to know what is around the next turn, over the next hill, or even just around the corner.

So this got me thinking. Yes, I know I have a very “different” thought process. Some people might even call it “unique” and I am ok with that. It makes for good blog fodder.

I was thinking about what it would be like to live our lives backwards. To begin at the end and work toward the beginning.

Just think, your life would begin with all the memories of all that has happened to you. YIn one instant, you would know everything you ever would learn. You would have all the experiences you would ever have stored up in your mind. You would have a completed life with your mate, your children, and your family. You would know of all the successes and failures after they occurred and will have all those lessons learned actually learned. You would know how everything ends, how all is resolved, how the story finishes.

That sounds so appealing to me.

And then I did some more thinking.

But if we lived our lives backwards then we would have to experience time retreat from us. We would begin to forget things. We would no longer have our memories, they would be erased from us. Life would become smaller not larger. Our families, our loved ones, our friends would be stripped away from us and we would know of them no more. We wouldn’t learn anything, in fact we would unlearn everything. Wisdom would depart from us, always out of our reach and with no promises to ever return. Love would be torn away and the life we had built with those we love would crumble and just disappear. We would regress from knowing everything we could ever know to knowing nothing at all.

And we would end up at the beginning of our life, which is now the end of it, ignorant, small, and without all those things that we had treasured and found so pleasing to grasp all at once.

So as much as I like to know how the story ends, what is up ahead, the answer to my questions of why and what. I don’t want to miss out on the joy of learning, the joy of living, the joy of experiencing.

Life is meant to be lived forward; to be grown; to progress; to stumble, fall, and get back up and continue on. We are to become who we are by what we experience, to gain memories that we will treasure, to feel the deepest lows of pain and the soaring heights of joy to make us who we are to be at the end of our lives. We are to experience for the sake of experience. Not knowing what is ahead helps us continue to climb over the next hill, to take the next turn, to not stop and just stay where we are because there is always something ahead of us to explore, to see, to know.

How sad would life be if we lived it backwards? How horrible to forget all that we are and to become who we once were?

So I don’t know all the answers, I don’t know the ending. And as much as I want those things, I want the experience more. I want the lessons learned; the love shared; the highs, the lows; the road that makes me the me I will one day be.

Just a thought I had.