My Future Self

I've been humouring myself lately with the notion of one's future self being a distinct and separate entity from one's present self. We experience the passing of time in a completely linear way and so each instant is essentially a physical snapshot of the larger entity which is your (so-called) life. Like individual frames on a film reel, your physical instances through time are discrete and incapable of interacting directly with each other. They can interact though. And this is where I find much amusement.

I can't effect past versions of myself since he is in the past and time marches only forward. Nothing I can do will effect him. My future-self, on the other hand, (insert evil laugh) has to take whatever I throw at him. He just sits there unsuspecting while I churn through time creating situations he can do nothing except cope with.

While in University I was pretty mean to my future self. I would get drunk and stay up really late without much consideration that my future self, say,  had to wake up early and write an exam. My future-self soon built up quite the resentment towards my past-self, meanwhile the past-self did his best to ignore the future-self knowing full well he wouldn't be around to receive the wrath when future-self awoke. Future-self spent many mornings cursing the ground that past-self walked on.

Lately I've been trying to get more into a habit of being kind to my future-self. Because after all, a future-self, by definition, will eventually become a present-self and then finally a past-self of its own. It's that transition through the present-self that is the important part. Without the present-self the past and future-selves have no connection. And it is the present-self that has (present-tense) the hangover and the bags under his eyes.

I think I'll officially declare July 17th 'Be Nice To Future-Self Day' and participate by buying my future-self a nice new Titatnium iBook. I'm sure he'll like that. And then after that I'll go and get drunk. :)