I swallowed hard. For a person with hallucinations, it can be so frustrating to feel that events and places that are so important to you can’t be understood by the world. The trick is to share of them what you can with the people close to you—people you trust. “I was hurt. It made me sad to see her so angry and upset. I wanted it to stop. I wished I could go back and keep it from happening, but apparently I can’t.”
Eva smiled. “Noah, that’s not what you would have said if you had been caught cheating at seventeen, is it?”
“No, I guess it’s not.”
“Noah, I don’t think a human ever finishes growing up. It’s a lifelong journey that has no end, and that can be discouraging. Sometimes it’s good to look back and remember how far we’ve come.”
I thought about what she said while I absentmindedly rubbed my forehead. “But it won’t be enough. I’ll still screw things up.”
* * *
When I was thirty-one, I looped back to the night I met Rachel for drinks. There really isn’t much to add. All I will say is that there was a very good reason that at that moment I believed my wife to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
At the time, I hoped I could change the future. Now I know that to be impossible.
I never mentioned my flashback to Eva. She had made her position clear, and I really didn’t want to get back into the argument. We would have to agree to disagree. Perhaps I could have told Rachel, but I was really too scared that I would upset the apple cart, so I kept things to myself.
Our thirties were dedicated to the movie industry. Through it all, Rachel and I managed to stay married, which is less rare than you might think in Hollywood. Bad news gets clicks and eyeballs. My anniversary doesn’t. Yet no matter how good things seemed, I had a nagging fear about the future. Part of me still believed that somewhere along the line, I was going to do something unpardonable, and she would leave. It felt inevitable.
By the time my mid-thirties came around, I became obsessed. I did everything I knew to make sure my wife felt cared for and loved. I had strict, almost prudish rules on the set when it came to my relationships with women. I think Rachel found them a little embarrassing, but I know she appreciated the intent.
I also became suspicious and controlling at home. I began to wonder if it hadn’t been me who caused the problem. I started to play the director with my wife, making sure we did things together. I’d call at odd times to see if she would pick up. The more uptight I became, the more distant it made Rachel.
I felt trapped. Our marriage began to feel like a husk that had been scooped out from the inside. We both ran away to our work.
Rachel, a publicist, helped out on numerous movie campaigns. On the side, she picked up a few small roles here or there. She always had acting talent but never the drive to make a career of it, so she did little stuff.
My first big-budget movie had been marginally successful. It certainly didn’t fail. Put it this way—it was good enough that I could get more money, and if you’re a director, that’s all that matters.
I spent the next few years attached to a lot of science fiction and superhero movies. I made an ungodly sum for studio shareholders and didn’t do too badly myself. Budgets for genre films like these increased rapidly during those years.
As the money grew, directors started to lose control of their films. All movies were required to show fidelity to the same worn-out tropes. My job was slowly being replaced by the focus group.
Directors were giving up. Good people—people you’ve heard of—were talking about quitting and doing other things.
Finally, I had enough. Something had to be done.
It was a fellow director who gave me the idea. I won’t name him, but he got his start on television with a certain teen vampire slayer. The guy looks at me over the top of his glass of beer one night and out of the blue says, “Sometimes I fantasize about creating a fake set of dailies and keeping the real edit secret. Then I’d switch them when it goes to print.”
“You’d never work in Hollywood again.”
He shrugged. “Unless it was good enough.”
* * *
Which is how, two years later, I put my career on the line and lied to a studio. I took on an adaptation of a book called Gossamer. The author played with the hero quest and growing up stuff in some really intriguing ways. Anyway, the subterfuge started at the beginning of the project. I had two scripts, one that I always showed to the suits, and one that I used with the crew and actors. I shot and edited both of them. Of course, I was far over budget. God bless my producers, George Katzenbloom and Maddie Stern. They ran so much b.s. by the higher-ups to get that done.
When we finished, we presented the studio with both films and demanded that they focus group them side-by-side. I remember sitting in Don Mecklenberg’s office and getting the dressing down of a lifetime. I think the three of us left that meeting convinced we would never work again, but once Mecklenberg brought his blood pressure back down to its usual high level, he focus grouped both cuts and mine won out, hand over fist.
The following March, I walked into the Dolby Theater. At the age of thirty-seven, with Rachel by my side, I nervously took my seat.
No sooner had I sat down than I was back in my office sitting at my desk. The house seemed quiet. The first thing I noticed were the age spots on my thin and wrinkled hands. My back ached just sitting there. In front of me on the desk, prominently displayed but very dusty, sat an envelope, marked in bold black letters: From 73 to 37.
I opened it.
Dear 37,
First of all, they’re prime numbers. Every jump happens during a prime-numbered year. I don’t know the significance, but at least you’ll know when you can expect them. If you really want to trip your mind out, then ask yourself how I know about the prime numbers if I got it out of the same letter thirty-six years ago. You’ll noodle on that one for years. I don’t think we can understand the answer.
When I was your age, I would have killed for someone to tell me how it was all going to turn out, particularly with Rachel, but now I’m going to piss you off because I’ve realized that the vulnerability is an important part of the journey. So while I’m not going to spill the beans on your future, I do want to help you choose the right path. So here’s my advice:
Letting go is about being vulnerable to yourself and others. Trust that most of the time it’s going to be ok, and when it’s not, trust that you are still valuable and have something worthwhile to contribute.
I love you, 37. Learn to love yourself.
73
I sat at the desk trying to soak in every word in front of me. I didn’t know how much time I had. Minutes? Seconds? I was trying to memorize each word when I heard someone stir in the corridor outside the door. I wondered who it could be and looked up, desperately hoping. I held my breath as the soft fall of footsteps padded down the hall, and then I was back in the Dolby, breathing hard and trying to control my emotions at this very public event.
I won several gold statuettes that night. They sit on a shelf in my living room.
When I told Eva about my latest hallucination, she had an interesting response. “You know, Noah, you give yourself really great advice.”
I chuckled. “How’s that?”
“What’s interesting is that you and I don’t have to agree about time travel to agree on this point. Maybe your future self just sent you an important message. Maybe your future self saved you from a pretty bad life when you were thirteen. I’d rather think that some part of your thirteen-year-old self was trying to protect you, but I don’t think it matters either way. What matters is that you’re changing your path.”
“How am I changing things if things always happen just as I’ve seen them happen?”
“I think that’s where my point of view lets me see more clearly. From a non-time-travel perspective, you’ve done a fine job of understanding your weaknesses and growing from them. You’re still married. You’ve won multiple Os
cars, for Pete’s sake. It’s only your belief that you’re somehow tied to the railroad tracks in life that has kept you down. If you could give up your worry about the future and truly live the moment in front of you, I think you might be quite content. Think of it this way; each one of these hallucinations has served you in some way. You’ve been helping yourself all along. I have to believe there will come a time when you look back and see that courtroom as a gift. I think that’s what you were trying to say to yourself with the letter.”
I left that meeting with Eva more hopeful than I had been in a long time. If I was working from the future for my own good—even if I was hallucinating the future for my own good—then perhaps there was some way forward that didn’t involve disaster.
With hope, I finally began making progress with Rachel. I started trusting again, and slowly our marriage stopped feeling so hollow.
I got out of the way and let her career take center stage.
Well, in truth, my career hit a bit of a slump. I was never told that I had been blacklisted, but for some reason, it suddenly became hard to find money to make films. I guess winning eight of the ten Oscars Gossamer was nominated for—including best screenplay, best director, and best picture—wasn’t enough for Hollywood. Publicly, I was called a maverick; privately, my scripts were considered D.O.A.
I took some time off, waiting for things to cool down. I wrote a novel. It was terrible. I kept telling myself that I still had something to contribute.
Careerwise, it was a long four years. Marriagewise, we thrived.
At forty-one, I was offered a chance to do a television series for HBO. It was good business to have my name behind the project. I jumped at the chance—anything to get back in the chair. It was an LA noir thing about a former drug dealer who turns P.I. when he’s released from prison.
A few weeks later, I found myself walking around a studio backlot with an assistant producer who was showing me the sets they had in mind for the first few episodes. He showed me the office space they had set up for the lead’s parole officer and a few other things. Then he opened a set of double doors, walked me into a full-sized courtroom, and said, “Welcome to California Superior Court. Of course, this courtroom is about three times as big as the real ones, but it gives the cameras places to move.”
I covered my mouth and collapsed into the back bench, eyes filling with tears. I looked at the producer and said through a husky voice, “Sorry. Can I have a moment?”
Startled, and a little concerned, he said, “Yeah, sure,” and stepped back out the doors.
I knew then exactly how I was going to set it up. I dialed my wife’s agent.
Three weeks later, we did a casting call for a whole bunch of bit parts. My wife auditioned for the part of the lead’s estranged wife who divorces him in a flashback during the first episode. I sat in for the lead, who had already been chosen. Without any cameras and the crew sitting in as the audience, we ran actors through their paces. I had written the script the night before.
I had the hardest time holding it together when Rachel arrived on set. I kept my distance until we were sitting there with the gap between us. I said action and almost immediately disappeared into the back of my head as my nineteen-year-old self came to see what might have been if he hadn’t changed.
Oh, how desperately I wanted to watch Rachel. I wanted to see if she understood, but I was helpless, and then our eyes met. She kept her character, but after thirteen years of marriage, I saw what my teenage self could not. I saw the surprise and recognition.
As soon as I was allowed access again, I cut the scene. This time I was prepared for the onslaught of emotions. I called for a lunch break and quickly sat back down, staring blankly at the judge’s bench in front of me. While the others walked away, Rachel got up slowly and came over. She sat down on the table facing me. Towering above me as I slumped in the chair, she focused her ice blue eyes on mine. “I believe you.”
The sweet relief that I had been holding back started to wash ashore. “Really? I thought you would say that I just set this up to fool myself.”
“I did think that, and I was really pissed.” She chuckled. “The anger was really great for my performance, and then I saw your eyes. They weren’t the eyes of someone who knew what was coming. There was genuine shock and fear in them, and I knew.”
My shoulders began to shake.
Rachel got off the table and wrapped me in her arms.
“I did it to change myself, Rachel. I did it all because I wanted a good life, a life with you.”
* * *
There’s really not much to tell after that. Forty-three was really interesting. I ended up arriving at the breakfast table with Rachel when I was sixty-seven. We had a nice five minute chat before I came back. Our only child was born soon after. Rachel had never told me she wanted to have a child until that moment.
Eighty-one was the hard one. Rachel had been gone three years at that point. I jumped back to forty-seven, and there she was.
Overall, the jumps were much less dramatic after forty-one. It’s almost as if the universe knew that I already had what I truly needed.
There isn’t an open loop for eighty-nine unless I jump forward to ninety-seven, which I hope to God I do not. So I expect I’m near the end.
I don’t know what to say, except I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t dropped that tray. What would have changed? Would things have been worse? Or would they have been better?
Two days ago, I had my chance. One moment I’m bending over to tie a shoe I can barely reach, and the next I’m looking down a thirteen-year-old girl’s shirt. I hesitated. I could change everything, and then I realized that it had been a good life.
After I dropped the tray, I cried without shame. I cried for the thirteen-year-old who would suffer so much. I cried for the woman I loved and had left behind. I cried for Alexis and her insecurities and for the innocence we were in such a rush to leave behind.
And I cried because despite all of life’s indignities, regrets, and pain, I would have gladly traded places with my thirteen-year-old self and done it all again.
A Word from Erik Wecks
You may not know it yet, but we are in the midst of a scientific revolution in the understanding and treatment of mental illness.
New therapies such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are part of a new wave of rigorous scientific methods for handling what were once thought to be intractable mental illnesses. These new Cognitive Behavioral Therapies are making a difference in the lives of those who struggle with everything from Depression to Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Not only are practices such as mindfulness, meditation, and self-compassion showing demonstrable, scientifically-valid improvements in such illnesses, but the suspected reasons behind these improvements now fit into a strong vibrant narrative of the human mind.
Scientists now understand that human behavior is governed by two competing systems, a limbic system that is closely tied to your core evolutionary missions of survival and procreation, and a prefrontal cortex that functions as an advanced pattern recognition system. It is the prefrontal cortex that has provided our obscene evolutionary success.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the interplay between these two systems. For instance, have you ever had the experience of being deathly afraid of something—say jumping into water—based on an event that happened in childhood? That happens because the limbic system has no sense of time or teleology. It doesn’t understand that what was dangerous for you as a child is no longer dangerous for you as an adult.
This is why so many of our emotional experiences in life are front loaded to our childhood where our limbic system learned the patterns it will use to govern our existence until we die. Scientists now believe that our core belief that life is either generally safe or generally dangerous develops before we are two years old. Think about that! By the time we
’re two we have made decisions about the nature of existence that, without intervention, will govern many of our behaviors until we die!
This leads me to wish that I could travel in time. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could go back to important moments in our life and nudge ourselves in the right direction? What if we could see the consequences for our choices years down the road? How would that change our behaviors in the past?
We may not be able to travel in time, but through new therapies we are beginning to be able to slowly reprogram our limbic system. In a real sense we are now able to go back in time and learn the right lessons from the past in order to live wholeheartedly in this present moment.
To my eyes, that is a revolution. We are living in an era in which our growing understanding of the mind will have significant impacts on our well-being for centuries to come. It may well be that in the same way the industrial age brought a new era in human physical heath, the information age will create a new era in human mental health.
http://www.amazon.com/Erik-Wecks/e/B007J8G5OQ/
Life/Time in the New World
by Ann Christy
Chapter One – Wakey, Wakey
“HELLO, THERE. How are you feeling?”
Darren Gordan tried to focus on the blurry smudge above him. He could tell it was a face and the voice—a woman’s voice somehow both light and husky—seemed to be coming from that general direction. A fuzzy outline of dark hair surrounded a paler surface, two dark spots for eyes. The image wavered a bit as the face turned away. A moment later, an equally blurry shape he thought might be a hand tapped away at something that emitted sharp, computer-like tones with each movement.
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