When I worked in the cafe at Malaprop's years and years ago, one of our regulars - I believe his name was Derek - described to me a philosophy about the impact of events over time. Events, he said, are like rocks dropped in a pond, the ripples from which radiate in all directions. The waves don't just move into the future. They also move into the past (and presumably into parallel realities, but let's leave that alone for now). His point was that according to this theory, events in our future have an impact on us in the present. We're driven forward as a result of our past and future actions.
Personally, I don't find it practical to conceptualize time as anything other than linear and mono-directional, as scientifically prove-able as it may be at some point in our future (ironically). I prefer a slightly different take on the metaphor. I think about the effect of events in my life on my perception of the past and interpretation of my memories. It makes more sense to me. Memory isn't linear. It's more like the pond. The most active and relevant parts of my memory are the parts where most of the waves converge.
It doesn't matter how long ago the events occurred, necessarily. They're all in there, bumping against each other. As I move through time, new events change the context of the old events, giving some events more weight and meaning than they previously had, perhaps giving the illusion that certain things were "meant to happen". It's only an illusion, of course. We revise our memories to create the stories that we need to make sense out of our realities.
Yes, there is a little something that gets mixed up in our memories - imagination. Imagination is the thing that lets us reinvent our histories to fit our stories about ourselves. It also lets us envision our futures. Do the events in our imagination have the same impact as the events of our realities? I think they can. How we build ourselves up or tear ourselves down (be it in the past, present, or future) is one of the limiting factors of our future development. The events that occur outside of our control either support or contradict our visions of ourselves - either perpetuating our self-fulfilling prophecies or shattering what we think we know about reality...
I only wonder how one person's imagination might affect the realities of others.
