Getting past X-Ray vision.

We were in grade school. We talked about interesting things like they mattered. It was cool. Any one of these topics could last a whole lunch period. A week, even, depending on whatever it was.

If I had your eyes, would I see the same green you see?

And this would morph into: Yeah, but, it’s not the eyes, is it? It’s how the brain decodes what the eye sees. So, if I had your brain, would the green you see look like the green I see?

If you switched brains, would you be able to remember? Wouldn’t your memory of your green—the one you have now—stay in that brain?

And so on.

Sometimes we busted something but kept up the lore anyway. Like Superman’s X-ray vision. Okay, we thought it pretty cool that Superman could see through walls. And necessary, too. It can mean life or death in some cases. Somebody would start:

But here’s what I don’t get…

What?

Superman’s X-ray vision can see through that wall, right?

Yeah. Or that door.

Or that mountain.

Right. I get that. But how does he know where to stop going through things?

Whaddaya mean?

Say he wanted to see what was in that room. He turns on his X-ray vision and it goes through the wall. Then it goes through the desk and chair in the room. Then through the next wall. Then through the rest of the building…

I see, and then all the way to China!…

Yeah. I get it now! Or, all the way through the universe!…

That’s my point. It can’t stop.

And we’d pause on that thought. And then someone would say,

Do you think Superman could see through Mrs. Wilson’s dress?

That’s right, we’d say something like that. It’s horrible. But when you’re a kid, sometimes X-ray vision is necessary.

And I think about knowing the future in a way similar to the problem my friends and I figured out about Superman’s X-ray vision. Let’s say you had that super power: you could know the future. You ask most people to imagine they could know the future and they typically treat it like the comic writers of Superman. The same way that Superman wants to see what’s behind that wall, right there, right now, people would want to know the future of specific things. Will I get that job? Will he call me? Will my son do okay this year at school? The power of knowing the future would be focused on things close by in the moment. Even those items a bit off in the future are still the things right in front of your mind’s preoccupations in this moment.

But, if you really know the future, it doesn’t stop at your job or your current love interest. It keeps going. And going. And going. Until there is no more future.

Forget where that is on a timeline. That’s a whole n’other story.

What is it to know all of the events—all of them, in every direction—until you are left with nothing else to know? I don’t mean nothing else to know like the capitals of all the states or the solutions to complex linear algebra questions. I mean all there is to know that the future can tell you. And more specifically, all there is to know that the future can tell you about you. Compare what you think knowing whether you get the job does for you to knowing everything about what your entire future could tell you.

I am imagining that it would be a different kind of peace. And I do think it is some kind of peace that we seek in wanting to know the future about specific things. If we could just know this one thing, we tell ourselves, we’d feel better about what might come next. We are just trying to get through each event. Each moment. Each thing standing in front of us. But we want to know we are okay on the other side of each thing. We want to know we will still be us on the other side. Or, better yet, that we will be a happier us. Knowing the outcome of this thing can give us the information we need to make a better decision for the next thing.

But, who are we if we know everything about our future?

So think of it this way: imagine you know how everything is going to turn out. Including your death. Sure, add, including after death. You don’t just know it like a huge encyclopedic series bought over time with grocery bonus stamps. I mean, what is the feeling you’d get from knowing everything? That feeling. If you knew everything, how would that change how you behave in this moment, now?

What does Superman see when he sees all the way through the universe? When does his mind stop cataloging all the things along the way and just take it in all at once?

When do we stop knowing ourselves as the sum of individual events and know ourselves all at once? And know that now. Who are we then?