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I read a story about a women who experiences multiple personality disorder in a rather unique way. She takes on personalities that reflect different stages of her life such that at any given time you might be talking to her as if she was a little girl, a high school teenager or a married woman (which is not easy for her husband to deal with). It made me wonder about the linearity of time and whether our concept of time is tied up with our identity and memory, both of which are not necessarily created or stored in a linear manner.
What about having a conversation with a friend in person and realizing after the meeting that they had left you a voice message earlier about something else that was brought up in the conversation (or a similar experience)? In a way if you had heard the voicemail earlier it might have influenced the subsequent conversation, but the discovery after the conversation adds something different to the next meeting or chat.
So the concept of time can be far more complex and interesting than you think, making the notion of multiple dimension and parallel universes more interesting to ponder upon. The idea of a linear flow in time is quite restrictive and robs us of the mysterious and wonderful way our mind works. Perhaps with a little bit of training we can learn to process our thoughts and ideas in a way that lends to more creativity and connections.
Similarly, even though the concept of a blockchain is that you keep adding to it and that nothing is removed or erased from the past, our interactions with people on Steemit is largely dependent on how the different branches of posts and comments weave themselves together.
The two elements that help us make sense of this entanglement of conversations (not to mention Discord and Steemit Chat as well) are perception and perspective. Perception is based on our view of the conversation at the time when we enter into it, and figuring out the relative time that people have posted before and after you. Maybe you only found this post after someone has resteemed it and that you were following their feed, but the author might have written the post a long time ago. This means that your comments may be written as if you had seen it when the post was first published, or you can create a much wiser after-the-fact commentary for future readers to marvel at. This applies to the perception you choose at the time of writing, and also the perception of the audience at the time of reading.
Perspective is based on the collective view of the conversation, and not necessarily dependent on the time when we enter into it, therefore the contribution is not time sensitive or subject to its interpretation. You are simply contributing to a bigger picture/painting/discussion and that every bit of additional information or knowledge simply adds to the beauty or mystery of it. I think this is what we should aim for in our collaborations on steemit, and what I hope to see more of in the future.
By having a sense or understanding of your perception and perspective of a post, you can add value to it in a way that doesn't interrupt or disturb the natural flow. This will make your comments or contribution feel more organic, a ripple rather than a splash in the pond - an natural progression of the flow of time that we weave a part of ourselves into.