Although the grandfather paradox is mostly about the past it also effect’s the future in many ways. As for how it links to self-love, well you will have to read till the end of the blog to find that out.
Firstly, what is the grandfather paradox?
Let’s imagine that time travel is possible. You decide to travel back into the past and meet your relatives when they were young. One day you inadvertently kill your grandfather. This of course creates a paradox. If you kill your grandfather then you yourself will never be born, in which case you will never exist to travel back in time and kill your grandfather in the first place.
It’s like Marty McFly’s creepy photo in ‘Back to the Future’ where all the kids start disappearing because their mother and father never hook up. But of course, that film never dealt with the fact that Marty could have never of traveled back in time to break-up his parents if he was never born in the first place. You can’t blame the Hollywood for leaving that information out.
For many scientists the grandfather paradox is an example of why traveling back in time will never be possible. This said, if you really want to get nerdy, you can look into parallel universes to get around the paradox. Therefore when you travel back in time you are not actually traveling to your own history but instead a parallel version of it. You might state that the alternate reality has the same paradox, though in the world of quantum mechanics particles often do things in parallel. This is called quantum supervision. And as particles make up our reality it does lead us to believe that such a thing is plausible.
And…….. Take a breath…
Although I would love to go into science in more depth, I am leaving such discussions for a later chapter on quantum mechanics. Let’s instead get straight to the point.
Traveling back in time doesn’t just affect your own life, it affects life itself. One little change can begin a ripple which will alternate the course of humanity. Sure, it won’t necessarily be the difference between a world war and ultimate peace on Earth, though it can affect who is born, who is not, and most importantly, it will affect all of those whose lives you care about. So when you look at the scale of your daily crappy life don’t be upset, according to chaos theory you could have just caused world peace whilst buying your soy milk latte.
There you go, feel good about yourself for a moment and come back soon.
I talked about Karma in the last blog though I didn’t go into depth on how our existence is a reflection of ourselves. When we give kindness, when we radiate self-love and contentment, and we do this not because we are trying to prove a point (I found this out the hard way) but because this is the mindset we live in, our reflection radiates through our reality. And what is reality but a reflection from our own perception and beliefs? This is how Karma works. Whatever ripple we project outwards quite often comes back to us in the same way. Not always, but more often than none.
To notice reflections and to see where we are going in the future it is not a matter of forward planning but instead of presence and awareness. If we want something in the future it will continue to remain in the future. But if we look at what we are trying to obtain, and then we try to understand the emotions that lay behind our desires, we can bring our future goals to our present moment.
This is very similar to how self-love works. If you look at what you think you will gain from having a partner/career or community you will see what emotions you are missing in the present. By noticing the happier and/or more successful person that you believe you will become from your achievements you will see what emotions you are missing in the present. By being aware of the hole within your conscience that craves overeating, partners, drugs, ways to constantly fill up your time, objects, gadgets and an overwhelming requirement to impress others, it leads you to the emotions you are missing in the present. Self-love is not about waiting till you have ALL of these things before you appreciate life. It’s about feeling it now. And this is why the future is often discussed as an illusion.
They say that when you have self-love (and therefore are content) a lover finds you the next day. So how does this work? It’s because there is nothing sexier, appealing and more attractive than a person that doesn’t give a shit. A person with self-acceptance, their own purpose and an ability to be in the present moment is what society yearns for. We think its confidence and success, yet it is nothing more than a person who accepts who they are and where they are in life. They are not rushing around, nor are they living in the past or the future. They are present, they are at peace, and they notice the small things that make life worth-while.
Now this chapter did not mean to state that you shouldn’t buy an Ipod, that fancy car or a new house. Living in a temple praying all day is not the existence many of us desire. Though stepping back and viewing the undue pressure we place on ourselves to always be somewhere else is worth contemplating. And maybe, just maybe, by looking into what emotions we want in our future, we can bring those feeling to the present. Because the future will one day be now, and when that occurs do you really think that you will be finally satisfied? Or at that time will you still be thinking about what you need next?
The future IS now, so unless you want to spend the rest of your life chasing ghosts it’s worth bringing the future to the present. Your dreams, your desires and your freedom from a never ending cycle begin here. It’s time to stop chasing and finally start living. It’s time to be present.
I wish you all peace, self-love and a content life.
Love, the lonely spaceman
The Lonely Spaceman 