September 22 our AiS class talked about these poems labeled as "sliding doors". I found them both to be extrememly interesting; one to talk about a tiny choice about taking a newspaper effecting the whole world, and one commenting on all these time ghosts living ahead of you.As I think about all the random or maybe not so random choices I've made in my life I can't help but wonder how my life would have changed. The second poem about the ghost ahead of the writer stricks me as interesting and I wonder something. He wrote that "there is no catching him,/no way to slow him down/and put us back into sync". When I first read the poem it made a lot of sense and these kinds of things really interest me. Yet when he wrote that I actually dissagreed. He is implying that the ghosts ahead of him will never make choices he otherwise wouldn't have. Maybe this ghost ahead of him would have chosen to go back for another book when the author in real time did not, putting them in sync.
Once I thought of this I wondered if maybe there is more than one choice that will still give you the same outcome. Everyone of us has made a lot of choices in our lives but are there some choices that don't change our lives? Maybe there are even some big choices that may change some things but later in our lives we would have still done something.
Out of all the choices I've made, which have made significant differences in my life? Which have changed others and are the bigger choices necessarily the most influential?
I also found the second poem very interesting, but I disagree with you about the interpretation of "there is no catching him,/no way to slow him down/and put us back into sync". The way I see it, the author simply chose to talk about the 'ghost' that only differed from him in that one choice, and no others, and ignored the myriad of other 'ghosts'.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the intersecting paths, several choices that give you the same outcome. It reminds my of the butterfly effect - a small event that has huge consequences in the future. Looking at anyone's life, you can see that the opposite is true, too.
This kind of brings up the debate between fate and free will. I personally don't really believe in fate; I think that everyone can choose their own destiny. But I also think that sometimes the most little of choices can make the biggest differences in you life. Little ones like, what car do choose to buy, what school do you decide to go to, what day you decide to workout, what language do you decide to take. I know that the seemingly simple decision of choosing between spanish and french in sixth grade has greatly affected my life and has made me the person that I am today, and the person I want to be in the future. The whole sliding doors concept really interests me too. It's exactly like the movie "Sliding Doors". Can missing or making the subway really change the whole outcome of your life?
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