The future is always there, some physicists say. It is as real as the present, as material as the road a mile ahead of us, inaccessible to us in the moment, but a sure destination nonetheless. Free will, according to this vision, is an illusion.
Our doom awaits us.
Doom is the feeling that things are certain to go badly for us. We have good feeling to hold this emotion. After all, every human life is sure to end in failure. To break down and die is our doom.
On the other hand, things can get worse before the end. We may well endure a long journey full of fear and suffering on the way to death.
Why do things have to be this way? We often feel as if our pain has been chosen for us, as if we deserve it, and are being punished for some inadequacy, even if we can’t quite remember what this unworthiness might be.
This sense of punishment is part of the emotion of doom as well. Doom is an old Germanic word that originally referred to a judgment, as in a decision made by a person given authority within a system of justice. Some people believe in the literal existence of supernatural judges who mete out punishments based on people’s moral failings. Other people simply accept this metaphorical frame as a mood of doom without having to construct a specific mythology around it.
Either way, we are doomed to feel doomed, at least some of the time.
