Speaking of Transparency

As much as I try to be objective, it’s probably painfully obvious: I am very emotionally vested in this whole experience.

Even if I wasn’t John (though I’m certainly biased toward the thought that I was), I understand his fear, his passions, the things that motivated him.  And although he wasn’t the archetypal teenage soldier cut down in the spring of youth, his story is so much like so many other stories of innocents cut down before they had a chance to live their lives to the fullest.

I really hope what I saw of the funeral was correct. I can’t explain how much better I feel after that came to the surface.

Speaking of the funeral (and off-topic for this post), I realized that the officer with the black push-broom mustache looked very familiar.  In fact, I saw a man who looked very similar in my recollections of the Middle Ages who I took to be my father (but I can’t be sure).  I know he couldn’t have been my father in 1915 because he was too young and I deduced from records that my father stayed home in Hereford, so he may not have been my father in the middle ages either.  In both cases he was short and stocky, so I’m inclined to think he wasn’t my father in this life either (my father does have black hair, but he’s 6′ 4″ and lean).  If a short, stocky man with a black push-broom mustache suddenly becomes significant in this life, I’m really going to start wondering.

A Word on Transparency

Whenever possible, I try to mention anything that would bias me toward a conclusion, false memory, or strongly-held belief.  This is partly an exercise in critical thinking for myself to go through the checklist of possible alternate conclusions that can be drawn.  Since “this was all just a strange daydream that went too far” is a constant possibility, I don’t mention that one as often, but I’m equally aware of that possibility for pretty much everything.

If at any point one of my readers feels I’ve overlooked some obvious possible alternate explanations or that I’m deliberately skewing my language to favor a conclusion or to lead others to the same conclusions I’m coming to, by all means call me out.  I embrace the possibility that this has happened as growing broader from my point of view, but I don’t pretend to be able to prove my claims of reincarnation to anyone but (perhaps eventually) myself.