Story of My Life

Filed under: Things I Read — mike @ 4:57 pm

I finished reading “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang a few days ago. It’s taken a while for my thoughts to wiggle their way from my subconscious through to the forefront of my mind. “The Story of Your Life” is about first contact with an alien species called the Heptapods.

What fascinated me about the Heptapods was that they had no concept of “forwards” or “backwards.” You see, the bodies of the Heptapods are constructed in a symmetrical three-dimensional (versus two-dimensional) way: cylinder-shaped torsos with seven eyes circling evenly and seven appendages, which could just as easily be used as arms or legs. A Heptapod does not turn around while walking; instead, they gracefully shift from one direction to the next without any apparent manipulation of their bodies’ positioning.

The Heptapods’ understanding of “forwards” and “backwards” extends beyond the physical aspects of their bodies and into their language. In writing, a thought is not expressed as a sequence of phonemes, but as a single graphical representation which would take hours to organize and express, but seems to be planned-out and happen all at once. The author also explains that their lack of sequencing extends beyond thought and into their understanding of reality.

For the Heptapods, there is no sense of time as we know it. After all, language is an expression of one’s thoughts and thus an expression of how one interprets reality. The Heptapods experience all events at once, as if they have already happened. The entire universe could be explained and described in one enormous history book, which was written prior to the beginning of time. They experience reality in the same way an actor progresses through a play. As Shakespeare said, “all the world is a stage.” This is especially true for the Heptapods.

One might think that experiencing life in this way should exhibit a sense of anxiety. But what purpose does anxiety play when you already know everything that has ever happened? However, the Heptapods do not loose a sense of awe and appreciation for the universe through their understanding. They, in fact, live for the sole purpose of exploring and experiencing its beauty as a linear path through time, like a song playing through its notes.

This was perhaps the most interesting and realistic piece of science fiction I’ve ever read. The author spoke to me not as a reader, but as a parent speaking to a child – both indirectly and literally. As a parent would, the author helped to reveal and explain things within my world which I haven’t yet fully understood. You see, I believe there is a little Heptapod in all of us. Although humans experience life as a sequence of events, it does not necessarily mean that we – somewhere within the depths of our consciousness – have not already read the stories of our lives.

For a while, I’ve had the theory that this part of me not only exists, but has a substantial influence in my decisions. In some ways, I’ve surrendered part of myself to this understanding. I’ve made many conscious decisions that didn’t make sense at the time in light of historical data, but proved to be invaluable later on. In fact, I can trace the modest ‘success’ I’ve had in my career and business back to several pivotal decisions which fall into this category.

But if I have been able to tap into this book of ages, I certainly haven’t done so consciously. I feel that I have no cognitive understanding of the future, and even my understanding of the past is both fuzzy and questionable. Whereas the Heptapods had the benefits of a full cognitive understanding of history, my consciousness is stuck in the moment. Without their security, I’m sometimes find myself struggling with paranoia and uncertainty as I try to act and present my ideas confidently (which is exceptionally important in what I do).

Perhaps this confidence is all that separates us from the Heptapods. Perhaps this is all that separates us from fully experiencing and appreciating life.