A step forward in time..

What if you had a glimpse of a day, say 10 years into future? Or maybe you could travel in time to the future and you see what happens to you then? What if you find out its not what you expect it to be today? I guess there is no question necessary if you find out that everything is exactly as you wanted it to be. Would you think its fate and resign yourself to what you saw? Or would you try to change whats to come? I'm sure you must be thinking what brought this on. Three things actually :).

First was a book I read called "FlashForward" by Robert J Sawyer. Its about a huge experiment resulting in most people in the world having a "flashforward" for a few moments where they see a glimpse of what they are doing 20 years in the future. There are 2 main protagonists - one of whom is engaged to one girl, but sees himself married to another woman, while the other doesn't see anything, which they later discover to mean that the person is dead. The former guy thinks that the future cannot be changed, so he starts thinking about breaking up with his fiancee, since he thinks thats what is going to happen anyways (indirectly causing the thing himself). The latter guy becomes obsessed with his death and determines he shouldn't die, so he tries to find people who know something about his death! I won't tell you what the outcome is, in case you are interested in reading the book (I'd suggest you don't look at the Wikipedia link either) ;-). Its two opposing attitudes which result in very unexpected results..

Second was another book called "The Time Traveler's wife" by Audrey Niffenegger . Its about a guy time-traveling all over the different times and finding out stuff long before he would normally find out. Its a beautiful book about the relationship between the guy and his wife, while the guy is jumping all over time. Some of the time travel concepts are not really "logical" (as if time travel itself is logical :-D), but its a book worth reading. In the book, the logic is that you can't change what's going to happen. But then again would you be able to go on if you knew things would end badly?

Lastly I saw a movie on the same concept, "Premonition" starring Sandra Bullock. The movie itself wasn't anything great, but again on the same concept that I'm talking about. We always hope that things are as good or better for us in the future. What would you do if you knew they weren't? Its a very scary thought. More scary is death (there, I said it). I don't fear death for myself but I'm very scared about my loved ones. I pray that no harm come to them and whatever harm may go through me first (on a different track, there is a saying that we are selfish in the matter of death too. We never think that others will suffer if we die, but just pray that we don't suffer ourselves!). Still its scary. So the best thing to do is to stop thinking about what will/won't happen in the future and to live in the moment as much as possible.

On the same note, 10 years ago, if you had asked me what I expected 10 years from then, it'd be pretty much as it is today. I'd certainly have thought that I'd be managing a career as well, but I'm glad that it is what it is. And I'd probably have imagined my life with my-then-current-infatuation, but this life with Sri is wayyyy better ;-). Well, I have some of my past infatuations on social networking sites as friends and lets just say that now I know whatever happens, happens for the good :-D. I am so so glad to have met Sri when I did and to have what I have with him. And no matter what happens tomorrow, I'll always have this :).

Just putting a song which tallies with the situation, Pink singing "Who Knew?" (the video isn't anything great, but the lyrics somehow are)..

Thanks to GAMBITGODDESS for the video.

As the song says, count your blessings now :).