Ten minutes of certainty, ten years of indecision
I was talking to my mother last week about the books she's currently reading. I don't remember how we got started on the subject, but it doesn't matter.
One of the books she's currently reading is The Measure by Nikki Erlick, and after she explained the premise to me, she asked the inevitable question.
Well, more accurate to say she started to ask the inevitable question, because before she could finish it, I answered her.
No, I don't want to know.
If I had the opportunity to know, with absolute certainty, when or how I was going to die... I would not want to know.
She looked a little surprised, I think.
I've had problems with this sort of thing many times in the past. Someone asks me a question and I answer quickly. And the fact that I answered quickly upsets them more than what my answer was.
They want me to think about it.
They want me to stew.
They want me to struggle.
They expect me to be indecisive.
But what they don't expect... is that this is not the first time I've been presented with this concept.
It's like when I came out as nonbinary.
Or when I voiced my thought that I was autistic.
People look at me as if my pronouncement arrived shortly after my discovery of the possibility. As if I did a single web search on Autism, took one test, and declared myself as such, with only mere hours from start to finish.
I researched autism for two years before I said a word about it to anybody, and the first person I mentioned it to was my licensed therapist. It was another six months before he confirmed my suspicion, and during that period, I'd only talked to folks abstractly online about it. It was only afterwards that I broached the subject with my family (to no small amount of pushback and denial from them; I haven't revisited the subject with them since).
I read the first Machine of Death anthology in the early 2010s.
I've had more than a decade to sit with the idea of knowing the manner of my own death.
That unequivocal No was not a spur of the moment decision. It's the conclusion to a tug-of-war I've spent years of thought on.
But all she saw was the few minutes between my learning the premise of the book and her asking me The Question.
It's like the legend about the maintenance worker's bill.
Chump change to point out what the issue was, but a lifetime of experience to find it.
My brain doesn't stop.
Ever.
Even when I'm asleep.
But you don't see it. You don't see all the many things that I've been thinking about. You don't know how many times I've weighed the pros and cons of any given decision. You don't see how I've labored over the consequences, the fall out, the missed opportunities, everything that could have gone wrong but didn't...
All you see are the ten minutes when the circumstances lie beyond my brain.
I pose a question for you:
How do you reconcile knowing when or how you're going to die with the belief that you possess free will?
If you have an answer, you can share it here.Leave a comment or continue reading: other Tuesday posts.
