Recursion

by Blake Crouch

Life is nothing how he expected it would be when he was young and living under the delusion that things could be controlled. Nothing can be controlled. Only endured.

“What’s more precious than our memories?” he asks. “They define us and form our identities.”

“Time is an illusion, a construct made out of human memory. There’s no such thing as the past, the present, or the future. It’s all happening now.” Barry tries to let

We are homesick most for the places we have never known. —CARSON MCCULLERS

He has wondered lately if that’s all living really is—one long goodbye to those we love.

And he wonders—is déjà vu actually the specter of false timelines that never happened but did, casting their shadows upon reality?

Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human—the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other. And he’s in the café again.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD