When something weird is going on, the best thing to do is ask somebody weird!  But I am not sure I have anybody weirder than myself to ask…

Can what we read tomorrow influence what we write today?

Yesterday I wrote an entry about how things had become better and better not just in America but most of the world. This morning, I got a mail from Questia, the online library, graciously allowing me to read for free a book by Sthephen Moore and Julian Simon, called It’s getting better all the time. The book details 100 ways in which the 20th century was a great improvement on all centuries past. From the little I have had time to read of it, it argues that this is indeed the best of times.

Now, it’s not like I did not know that already. Furthermore, the book is published by the Cato institute, with whom I am already on moderately friendly terms (as in, not mocking them on sight).

Still, the placement in time is vaguely disturbing, don’t you think? If I had published that essay today instead of yesterday, it would certainly have looked like the book was an inspiration, if not outright cause of my writing.

I wonder sometimes. The fact that we cannot remember the future, does that necessarily also imply that we cannot act on it subconsciously? I have given you several striking examples over the last ten years, such as the time I wandered into the computer shop and asked about an external hard disk hours before my existing disk suddenly died.  I noticed even as I was talking to the shop guy that I had no idea why I was there and doing what I did. Yesterday I felt a sudden surge of inspiration, but there was no external event that caused it.  Well, at least not until this morning.

I have said before that I view this similar to magnets and small iron objects. Usually the magnet will pull a needle toward it but will itself not be moved. But occasionally the magnet is on a tipping point and may be drawn toward a much smaller object by the same force.  Perhaps time is the same.

Of course, there could be other explanations that don’t defy common sense. For instance, maybe I took a particular interest in the book because I had just written about the same subject, whereas normally I would have thought “that looks vaguely interesting but I have other things to do” and quickly forgotten it. Yeah. That would explain it…

Except…

That first part of the entry which is not quite so upbeat?  Early this morning I received the following quote on Twitter: “Real gratitude must be expressed in a more positive way, by asking yourself what you can do to help others ~ Ryuho Okawa”.  Why do I get a tweet about that after I write about gratitude in that context for the first time in my journal?

No matter how you look at it, that entry would have made perfect sense if I had written it one day later. But I didn’t. Instead, life presents me with the inspiration for it the morning after I upload it. Pretty fascinating.