The Two Horizons of The Eternal Now

Over the weekend, I was asked if I believed in a higher power. I didn't get a chance to answer the question directly, not that I would have had a succinct answer anyway. This is my attempt to hammer out my position.

Without excluding any other possibilities in my own belief structure, I can immediately see two distinct higher powers that I must acknowledge at the foundation of my philosophy. I don't believe that these are necessarily in order of importance, as this is simply an initial gathering of thoughts, so I'm sure these ideas will evolve over time.

First, temporally: I must acknowledge that I didn't spring up out of nowhere. Across countless generations of my ancestors, it was their efforts to stay alive and to reproduce that made it possible for me to exist at this point in time. In simple terms, I believe that deserves gratitude. In the same vein, my immediate family protected me throughout my most vulnerable years of infancy and childhood. Again, I believe this deserves recognition and gratitude. Their efforts and actions leading up to my birth provided me with a gift of immeasurable value... a gift for which I am the only one able to provide a response in any given moment. This makes me solely "Response-Able" for each moment of my own life.

Secondly, I believe each of those moments is irrevocably stored in the fabric of the universe as we move through time, permanently documenting each of my actions, words, and thoughts as I form them. Viktor Frankl refers to this as rescuing potentiality into the treasured past:

"For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past, wherein nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured." — Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning

Vonnegut had a more colorful way of explaining this idea:

"[The fourth dimensional aliens] don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes—'with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other.'" — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

I agree with Frankl's conclusions much more than Vonnegut's, but I find that the visual is helpful. In any case, when I look back on my life many years from now, I would like to see that the actions, words, and thoughts that I have stored in the account of my life are worthy (whatever that means). After my death, that accounting may be all that is left of my existence. To me, success is looking back on my life and being satisfied with how I lived it. In that way, "future-me" will hold "current-me" to account. That makes me "Account-Able" for how I conduct myself in each moment.

In this short list of higher powers, I am tempted to include my children and their children; however, I don't think (in this moment) that my responsibility to them is foundational. Our inherent drive to shape the future for the better is the first requirement for responsibility. We cannot successfully achieve true accountability without paying forward the very essence of what our ancestors have provided for us. This forward-looking drive is how we honor where we came from while taking full ownership of our choices today, ensuring that when we look back on our lives at the very end, we can do so with satisfaction.

In that way, I see no less than two higher powers than my current self:

• The people and processes that gifted me the ability to respond to existence at all.

• The future-me who I want to be able to account positively for the choices made by present-me.

There certainly are other higher powers that I am not mentioning here, and there may be a highest power (i.e., God) that ties all this up in a neat little bow. But I believe that the two I have outlined here are sufficient to live my life morally.