Sunday, January 12, 2014

Time Shifts

There is a tenuous relationship between the here and now. We like to think that we live in the here and now, but that is an illusion just as the idea that there is a clear chronological time continuum that leads our lives in a straight line from beginning to end. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Logic would dictate that time is linear and maybe your watch supports that perception, but time has a mind of its own and leads us humans in any but a straight line. How often have you fallen asleep in a car and when you awake you are completely disoriented because of the distance traveled and the hours that you passed in your unconscious state? It is consciousness that dictates our connection with time. Ask anyone that has come out of a coma. Their link with time completed dissolved during that state of altered consciousness.

We all experience a lost sense of the time construct when we fall asleep. Time becomes meaningless during those hours of nocturnal rest.  These time shifts can be easily induced without falling asleep as in surgery or cannabis ingestion. What about when you are trapped on a plane or a classroom, maybe it is that meeting where time slows and you begin dreaming of the soft sands and warm waters of the Bahamas. You have just experience a time shift.

These are only momentary interruptions in what many see as a straight line of time. Too often we in the western world are ruled by chronology. We fight against time and try to put it in a little box and tie it up in a pretty little bow. But, when we open that box, time has played a number on us. It has left us in the dust, and we wonder where the time has gone. That is one little joke that time plays on us humans who do everything in their power to measure time and try to make it conform to our belief systems.

All you have to do is ask the Mayan’s about their measurements of time or the Afghans when 2014 is coming; maybe, the ancient Chinese would give us a better understanding of time and its influence on culture, or not. Everything we do in this country is predicated on the idea that time moves in a straight line. We are slaves to time as we define it. It all starts with that alarm clock that regulates daily habits. It drives how we educate children and dictates when we can and cannot work.

We try to control time with technology. We come up with time saving devices. There is no way to save time at least not yet. It is not like our artificial creation that we call money. You cannot put time away and use it at a later date though many of us would like to do that. Time marches on to its own drummer and we are along for the ride.

We have other odd dealings with time. Many people do not want to experience what we call the ravages of time. Many want to pretend that they not only can stop time, but they can reverse time. I don’t know how it all started, but we have created doctors who sculpt the human flesh to look as it did in days gone past.

It in no way looks as if you have lost 20 years. It looks more like your skin has been stretched too tight over a drum. That is neither here or there, it creates an illusion that time has stopped, and in the best case scenarios has been reversed. We only see what we want to see.

This technology does nothing to stop the degradation of cells. It is meant to create the illusion of youth. Aging is seen by some as giving into time. These procedures may make one a wrinkleless corpse, but it will no way change the landscape of cellular structure. Whatever time you have on this earth, enjoy it anyway you choose even if it means some sort of pulling and tucking.

Remember time goes beyond the spinning earth and slithers into black holes whose gravitational pull may be greater or lesser than we can hypothesis as well as their impact on the universe as a whole. If the universe came from nothing, then we have nothing to lose.

On the other hand, time is a man-made construct designed to make sense of limited days that this reality affords us. Put your time to good use or don’t. It is all up to you. You are the captain of your ship and get to sail it as you wish. But, when your time comes to an end, I hope that you have filled the minutes and hours and days and nights with memories that bring you a smile at the end of your time.

No comments:

Post a Comment