Has it really been eight years? It doesn't seem so long since my last time posting, but as the timestamp on my last post... and the fact I had to remember my password... would suggest, a great deal of time has indeed passed. Four moves, practically as many jobs, as well as the highs and lows in between, and here I sit, once again with a keyboard in front of me, and a race of thoughts going through my head as I try to pick out the exact words and phrases that convey those thoughts to type out.
So why come back now? Why, after all this time, do I proceed with reviving a blog that some may have forgotten that they were even following? In truth, even I am not 100% sure. But one thing I do know, in this day and age, there are a bunch more perspectives to view from than I had once even perceived, with the main difference between each, it seems, being merely a question of perspective. As my past posts, and even my own perspective of my abilities, would suggest, I have a knack for seeing things from other points of view. It may not be crystal clear all the time, but I'd like to think, even when my word choice is wrong, I at least see enough to understand a basis.
Even still, the perspectives I try to understand; whether it be through social media, personal interaction, or just witnessing events, can be so distant that you could almost give whiplash to the brain instead of the body. Most seem to stem from a thought of "I'm right, so the other must be wrong" even though it's, often, much more complicated. The confusion, frustration, or even anger at times comes from a lack of middle ground to discuss openly, because even when it is offered, ideas seldom come without their own biases.
As is typical for me, my medium defaults to a game that I feel helps to convey my thoughts, if not easier, simpler to some respect, and oddly, there are two that come to mind this time: Chrono Trigger and Evoland 2. Both share a similar premise, time travel, with the differences being basically all else. So why these two for an ancient blog revival on perspectives? Because one could argue that the story is the same, but told through another perspective. One is told by choice. The other by accident. In a broad sense, you could say that in both storylines, the plot climaxes with stopping a "world ending catastrophe" involved with the time splitting element, directly or indirectly.
Where they differ is where I think the words in my head are correlating the perspectives. They start simply enough; in one, the choice is made to rescue a companion before finding out that something ended the timeline, while the other, an unfortunate accident that you try to help a companion return home from comes to learning that it may not be such a simple trip.
The point is that while time travel is a key component in both, for one it's introduced as part of the conflict. In the other, is essentially serves as the only path forward until the true conflict is revealed. And I feel like this is where my perspective thoughts lean: While we like to feel like we have choice in most everything we do, there are on occasions times where we feel equally as much that the decisions are predetermined, and it's not always black and white as to which is which. Hell, I'd wager enough to say that sometimes, it's even possible to confuse the two.
It reminds me of that old "6/9" meme on the same idea; where two characters point to the number, saying what it looks like from their side. I remember a time when that had meaning. Most days you see in anymore, there's an addendum that says that one should clearly be right, and the other completely wrong, stating that there should be more numbers nearby that hint at which it is. And logically speaking, I would agree. But, I've also seen true where things... don't always behave logically, and I think that was the original point, lost in the conundrum. With a vacuum without logic, what you see is based on your own perspective. At the same time, with logic, the logic itself becomes it's own perspective. So here's my question: Seeing the puzzle with logic, is your perspective by choice or predetermined by the logic at which you adhere it to?
In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter much in this particular instance, but I would also say that it's not always the case. People who do things out of fear, anger, or sometimes just to survive can feel like they are in a situation in which that decision is taken from them, that they did what they were forced to have to do. At the same time, if you do something out of habit, even if the habit started as a choice, at what point did it become predetermined? Four choices later? Ten?
The problem I see most have with seeing other's perspectives is that those elements are removed, even in the best of cases. It's difficult to understand one's habits, one's fears, one's triggers unless you were there to see them develop. And that, in part at least, is why you see such the divide in perspectives today. Young look at the elderly, or even authority, with disdain simply because those individuals can't understand them, while at the same time the elderly or authorities just watch, confused simply because they can't understand, because the situations that are happening are actually foreign to them.
It is unfortunate, too. There is no clean middle ground, either because time has moved without us, or because we fear our time is coming to an end. And there's no easy solution, as much as one or all sides try to find one. Even in Chrono Trigger and Evoland 2, the resolution isn't so clean cut. Sure, you can fix the timelines, but one asks the question of when it is resolved, while the other ask makes you question if the resolution ends up being the cause all along. The best advice I can give? Perhaps to just take a moment, regardless of which side you are on, and ask why, and to keep asking why, even if you eventually reach that "I don't know... just habit, I guess" answer. To not solve the problem, but to try and learn why the problem exists in the first place. And if you find that point of disconnection, perhaps ask if there is a way to tie some wires together. Because even if the current isn't as strong, at least it would be better than nothing at all.
