Retrospectus: Iteration 32
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
August 28, 1988
The struggle for meaning affects all of us. The essential question of human life is “Why are we here?” And though I know no more of that answer than does anyone else, my peculiar Circumstance would prod me toward believing in the essential meaninglessness of everything.
I have succumbed to such terrible reasoning in the past. Committed atrocities…the memory of which haunts me still. And yet the last several decades have, thankfully, offered me healing. It is an old cliché that time heals all wounds, and I am grateful to see that time, at least, has not abandoned me.
Though I have begun to move beyond the mistakes of an unremembered past, I fear there is another consequence I must yet face as a result of my evil actions. I find myself…quite a bit more mentally fragile than I have in the past, even more than I was in my first life.
Hopefully this is only a temporary burden, as there is much work to do. I’m resuming my investigation into what is happening to me. I gave up the idea centuries ago, but it seems that even I wasn’t able to purge my own inquisitive nature; and a chance encounter with an astrophysicist friend from a prior Iteration sparked a new line of inquiry, one which I believe may yet hold some promise.
For the first time in a very long time, I can smile.