Stoically - My Musings

Parallel, what’s that mean anyway?

“Parallel, what’s that mean anyway?”

You friend asks and for a moment, a millisecond really, you contemplate the idea of strangling someone.  It’s not that you don’t like your friend, you do.  It’s that this monkey has the nerve, the sheer gall, to have no fraking idea about the concept that quite literally haunts your every waking moment.  And in that short, short moment the fact that your friend can blindly float through life without the shit ton of worry and fear you carry around every single day nearly undoes you.  Seeing as you are extremely pissed off in that moment where you border on the brink of coming undone you figure taking the monkey sucking kid of a donkey whom you call your friend with you is only fair.  You exhale, inhale, and center yourself (somehow) so that despite all your awkward lines and uneven weight you manage to remain balanced.

It’s not your friend’s fault.  It’s not anyone’s fault really.  Some days this makes it worse, some days this makes it better, some days it really doesn’t matter.  Your experience with parallel worlds is an inconsistent mix of unrivaled expertise and unsurpassed ignorance.  You have no idea how to describe something that, to you, just is.  ‘It’s a concept about worlds placed side by side, existing in the same place and time, separate but together’ you think.  Only it’s not because sometimes a parallel world can move quicker or slower or sideways in ways that language really hasn’t caught up to yet.  Plus, can something still be considered a concept if you’ve seen it?  Like, could bananas still be considered a concept to someone who’s never seen a banana despite all the people who have?  And how else are you supposed to explain a parallel world, it’s not like you ever studied this shit.  In fact, you have made a very concentrated effort to avoid it.  So you settle for the truth as you know it, no matter how underwhelming it is.

“It means that sometimes my reflection isn't really, well, me.”

The cognitive exercises are partially positive self-talk.** Like so:

1. I am allowed to need what I need.

2. Taking care of myself is a good and worthwhile time expenditure.

3. I decide what I should and shouldn’t be doing.

4. It is okay that sometimes...

Kahlan Amnell: Justice in the Midlands requires only one voice. Mine.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)