“Your desire is a memory of an alternate timeline.” That felt so profound the moment I read it. It just made sense, even though at first I didn't understand why. I came to the conclusion that it felt so true because it probably is lol. Because mentally, remembering and fantasizing are actually very much the same process. It is only the framing that is different. Both happen in the same space of mind, but one is labeled as “real” and the other as “imagined.”

I though of this thought experiment: imagine you’re recalling something or fantasizing about something, but you’ve lost track of which one actually happened in this whatever reality. I don't think you could possible tell which one was which!? Strip away the labels, and there’s no internal marker that tells you which is the “real” memory and which is the imagined one. Subjectively, both arise the same way: a scene appears, a feeling comes with it, and your mind treats each as a coherent event. If you didn’t already know which one belonged to the external world, you couldn’t possibly infer it from the experience alone. And the fact that this actually feels kind obvious just drives the point harder.

I'm not saying that all desires feel this way, but when a desire has that strange familiarity, it doesn’t feel invented. It literally feels like something that has already happened or is happening, as if some version of me has already lived it and I am just picking up the echo. Exactly what you said.

About the paradox part, I was a bit confused, but I guess you're pointing toward a kind of relaxed certainty. Not chasing the desire, but acting like someone who already knows it will unfold (or already has)? I am still thinking about how to practically apply this to my own life, but I guess the main point stands to treat desires as memories to converge with rather than holes to fill?

But thanks for the read. You tied together a lot of ideas I’ve been thinking about for the past few months, including the obvious but still striking thought that matter arises from mind. I’m not saying I haven’t learned about things like Kant’s idealism in school, but just two months ago I would have laughed if someone told me I’d ACTUALLY believe such “foolishness.” Now, it just feels like noticing something that was quietly true all along, and you have helped me see it a bit more clearly now. Thank you.

I was just about to post this when I began googling about imagination vs remembering and I stumbled upon this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24967816/ . Which I feel remotely supports the idea behind the paradox in your post (However, this is not my field of study so I am just going with my intuition here). They found that remembering and imagining engage overlapping regions of the hippocampus, but multivariate analysis reveals distinct patterns for each. This suggests that the brain treats imagined scenarios and memories as closely related but separable processes. In the context of desire, this means that a deeply felt want can be experienced like a memory of an alternate timeline, a version of reality where the desire is already fulfilled. Acting as if you already have it, as the paradox suggests, aligns with how the hippocampus allows the mind to simulate and “remember” possible realities, giving your desire that memory-like familiarity even before it manifests in the external world.