Brief Dissociation

I really look forward to writing my blog entries, not because I am expecting them to be read by someone [now], but that it is a great way to just do a little look-back on the day's happenings/thoughts and summarise them in a way that is cathartic.

I think this is especially relevant during this time period where I am on a sabbatical in the middle of a pandemic, where nothing normal is happening that allows the rhythmic ticking of time. A sense of the ticking of time is important because it provides a basis for grounding that I think is necessary to ensure that one does not fly off into a full-out dissociation moment, like that short [unwanted] episode I had in the morning while being in a relatively long line for kway chap.

Now, I want to preface this with saying that this is not a self-diagnosis, nor is it really something that is causing a negative quality of life. It is just an experience that I had that I decided to say here.

For a brief moment, I was suddenly realising that my current consciousness had no self-substantiable connection with the consciousness of [the metaphorical] yesterday; in that brief moment, I was not who I am, since the me who was from [the metaphorical] yesterday is but a snapshot in a moment of the state of the energy-mass-space-time system---by what reasoning are these snapshot states capable of being constituted to be the ``me'' that I am claiming to be?

There was a certain existential despair, and I really felt like I should just end my life since there was no real ``me'' in the first place---for that brief moment, I felt like I was just a ghost piloting a somewhat unfamiliar meat robot. Unwanted thoughts on how to end said life started to flood through my mind again. It was no out-of-body experience, but there was definitely some weirdness within.

Thankfully, the line eventually moved, and I snapped back to reality more properly, and the intrusive thoughts went back into the background.

I wouldn't say it was a harrowing experience, because there was never a real danger of me doing anything logically indefensible, but that it happened at all was a surprise. I should monitor my thought processes a little more carefully.

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Just wanted to share that The Tail End is a sobering look at just how transient human life is. I think that the three points in the end are really thoughtful; I replicate them here just for reference:

1. Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10× the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
2. Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you, not by unconscious inertia.
3. Quality time matters. If you're in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you're with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.

It is seriously food for thought, especially the part where Urban reminds us to make a conscious effort to decide on things, and not let the flow take us.

I see that as a more pro-active type of working with God, in that I shouldn't just ask Him questions that can be answered using tri-value logic (Yes, No, Wait), but to also do my own damn thinking too. Something about free will and God's sovereignity, and something about my personal observation that God does not do Second Law of Thermodynamics-violating miracles anymore---His will is expressed more subtly, and that His Word is written down for us because what He wills can be learnt by the thinking individual.

Do I have any theological reasoning for this? Nope---I'm no theologist, just an observer and a neophyte disciple of Christ.

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I finally completed the little task that I had set myself regarding the NKJV English Bible. Each book in the Bible had a short paragraph in the beginning that provided a general summary and other interesting points, and I wanted to extract them out for easy reference way back in the day. But it was always one of those ``man does it take time'' type tasks, the kind where it was just easy to procrastinate and end up not doing it. Anyway, I finally completed that task.

That's just a quick screen shot of a page of the extracted summary. I typed them out by hand from the NKJV, just so that I would learn of the details ``by osmosis''. Naturally, it was done in LaTeX, and I liked the better readability of the two-column layout.

No trip into Night City just yet... I might just do so after I publish this post. It was disgustingly hot and humid even for an efficient heat dispersing engine that is my body, so I figured that it was not that great an idea to try running Cyberpunk 2077 during the day.

Anyway, that's all I have for today. It's a short entry, but I think it's enough. It is okay that not every day is action packed enough that I could throw in a thousand-word essay.

Till the next update then.