In Kurt Vonnegut’s book Timequake, we’re brought into 2001 but soon ushered back 10 years due to an event called a “timequake”. Sounds intriguing at first, who doesn’t want another shot at making the past years better? I wouldn’t mind the reboot. But that’s not how this time event works. This event is more like hitting rewind on the VCR for a period of time and watching again from the earlier starting point. Everything’s the same, no surprises, the movie gets boring. At least until you reach the point at which you hit rewind…

So the movie gets boring. Sure, you might tune in for that one sex scene and you might still jump at that scary part or tear up at an emotional event. Even then the experience is dulled. I tend to lean as a (albeit quiet) type-A, so this rewatching period would lose my attention in a hurry. Now image 10 years of this! Yikes. It’s not difficult to understand the characters then, when they begin to just…tune out.

To me this ‘tuning out’ raises three considerations.

1.) If I were forced to re-watch the last 10 years of my life, how often would I care to ‘tune in’?

2.) How often do I live stuck in the past, burdened by memories, or with regret when I know that doesn’t solve anything?

3.) The malaise the characters experience is an allegory for an uninspired, routinized life which I fear myself and so many others fall into at times.

The first might be worth writing on the bedroom whiteboard. A great reminder to seize each day. The answer to this becomes increasingly important each passing day.

The second reflects of the first, and tells me to tune in more often now. Get out of the past, and actually pay attention to this moment.

The last is by far my greatest fear. (forget sharks, at least it’d be over quickly) That fear of falling into autopilot, tuning out and waking up some years later saying ‘Dear god, how did I get here? This isn’t where I wanted to be.’

When the characters in Timequake ‘tune-out’ and their minds go to rest, it reminded me of Newtons law of inertia, as in, an object at rest stays at rest. So even when the characters reach the present again and are granted a form of free will, they struggle immensely to snap out of it. Some fall over in place or just wander emptily through the streets wondering why things aren’t just happening for them.

It is during this moment that a recurring Vonnegut character named Kilgore Trout runs to through te streets shouting “Free will! Free will!” in hopes to wake everyone up. Sadly, it seems he was one of few waiting for this moment. The book ends not long after but I imagine Trout is more like the other side of Newton’s inertia law. Regaining free will was his catalyst to be set in motion and I bet he stayed in such a state.

In our lives, there isn’t a definitive time point that will grant this catalyst and we sure as hell can’t sit around waiting for one to happen. We have to set ourselves in motion. The biggest problem I’ve found is that inertia doesn’t simply take over like it will if you roll a ball down a hill. It’s more like a series of long flat lands with a few hills you can’t avoid but many more you’d have to seek to gain momentum.

I want to be an object in motion, which seems to say I must remain vigilant about recognizing the flat lands and pushing myself towards a hill.