soul_campaign | April 8th

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April 8th | Text

I've been thinking, lately, about something I experienced back in the place where I was born..

If you could meet yourself as a child…

Would she/he be proud of you?

What kind of excuse would you say to excuse the things you've done or the person you've become?

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And yet for some it's important to retain a piece of them that their child selves would approve of. A sort of base idea that to be happy, your inner child has to be pleased as well.

Why? It is certainly a nice enough notion, but is it really fair to think that one's actions must always be congruent with their childhood ideals? You might make a life-altering decision as an adult that your younger self would have disapproved of, but choices are made based on any number of factors that a child could not have hoped to foresee. To scold oneself for not being his own past ideal is to ignore the importance of educated choice.

No, it's not, for me at least.

I'm simply postulating a question and listening to answers, as I like to think and debate these things from time to time if possible.

But it is. Favoring a past self that no longer exists is cruel to the current self, for you are ignoring the events and beliefs that caused present choices out of some useless sense of nostalgia. Beig true to the "you" of the now might displease your inner child, but that child's time is over, and neglecting the current self to please it helps no one.

And you are hardly debating anything but simply rejecting others' logic without any attempt to actually justify your own argument, you know.

There's no sense in trying to 'justify' what my childhood self would have wanted, really. People in my world are created for an express purpose in the workings of the dome, so there really was no question as to who I would become, in the end. At least up until a certain point - but even Daedalus was hardly a future caster in that manner.

However I'm well aware it's very different for the people here - hence my interest in their thoughts.

Did you arrive at your current situation in life by complete chance and random guesswork, or did you act of your own volition with real purpose?

That is up for translation. According to some I acted as I was supposed to, as scripted, up until my grandfather and the Administrative Bureau grossly underestimated the potential of my curiosity in a situation that wasn't even supposed to occur. Following that situation, however, I can say that I acted fully of my own volition and a need for some... truth I couldn't place.

So a mix of both, if you want to be specific about it.

Do you regret your actions?

I've never settled on whether I do or not, to date. A part of me wonders if I started everything that would come to pass with being curious, but other days my sense wins out and I recognize it would have happened regardless.

Acceptance is not the same thing as not regretting something. But regardless, if everything occurred because of the choices you made, and you admit that you would not change it, then you are only unnecessary damaging your own psyche by worrying over the opinions of a version of you from before you made those choices. It is masochistic.

[and he likes to think he has some real expertise on the importance of choice.]

I'm not thinking on it as hard, or punishing myself as throughly, as you seem to believe I am. But still, sometimes it isn't so bad to remind oneself of anything embarrassing or... particularly striking in our lives to remind ourselves of how far we've come.

It's not necessarily entirely masochistic.

Then why do you worry about your past self being proud, about needing to excuse what you have done? Having come far is certainly a good thing, but you do not sound content when actually talking about it.

I have periods of restlessness, at times. Like most teenagers do. Contentment is hard to reach here, anyway, away from everything I'd grown even remotely content with.

This is why I work so much, so my mind doesn't have time to wander to these subjects.

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April 8th | Text

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