"You can keep blaming your parents for your life in your 20's, but by the time you're 30 it's your own fault."
--having a difficult time getting an original source on this quote
This is like unknotting an autoregressive term in a time series. Even if the past only has a hold on the present back to 5 years ago, your upbringing still influences you when you're 70.
who you were at 15 influences who you were at 20 ρ¹,
which in turn influences who you were at 25 ρ²,
and so on until 9 half-decades later there's a ρ¹¹ echo of your 15-year-old self
whose apprehension at the way she looked (or rather didn't look) rumbles faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly, faintly through time--the decisions then affected the next decisions which altered the next decisions ... on and on to the present.
If the initial spike was −1<ρ<1, then the rumble of the thunder diminishes geometrically over time. So a ρ=½ only shivers .00049 eleven knots into the future, and even a ρ=.9 recedes to a .314 by the time it's so deep past.
Maybe I can spot a corollary to the new parents' dilemma as well. If the present choices are always framed by the habits formed in the past, then ε perturbations in the baby's care echo forward, and forward, and forward...and can they really be undone?
