Yesterday someone posed a question to me.
“How has your relationship to the concept of TIME changed (if it has) since not being suicidal?”
After hearing this I laughed and thought, completely, utterly and yet not at all.
First off what is time?
According to Merriam-Webster
Time – noun
1 The measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues.
2 A nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.
There are 12 other definitions for time according to Merriam-Webster.
And that just when it’s a noun.
It can also be used as a verb and an adjective.
Any idea what the most used noun is in the English language?
TIME
We are addicted to it, clocks, schedules, dates, when, past, future, and present.
It’s how we define accomplishment, it’s how we measure our progress, it’s how we determine when to do this or that.
Let’s go back in time to the original question.
“How has your relationship to the concept of TIME changed (if it has) since not being suicidal?”
When I was suicidal, time for me was an avalanche, a crushing, swirling mass of confusion and suffering.
The past had collected high on the mountain top of my psyche and had suddenly come crashing down upon me.
My failures, regrets, and longings. Which then turned the perceived present into a disaster.
The idea of past, present and future are key.
Past being the things we perceive as happening before now.
Present is the NOW, which I could argue doesn’t exist, I’ll get to this in a moment.
Future is the space where the present hasn’t formed yet.
On the idea that the present doesn’t exist. I remember reading a while back that it takes us around 1/10th of a second to process what is happening now.
If our mind takes 1/10th of a second to process the environment around us we are responding to things that happened in the past. What we perceive as now is actually the past.
As I went through reassembling the pieces of myself buried under the avalanche of my mind, I became lightly obsessed with time.
It wasn’t so much that I started searching for it, but it came to me, and I dove in headfirst.
The first thing I read was
The Order of Time – Carlo Rovelli
Then came
Each Moment is the Universe – Dainin Katagiri
Then
Being-Time – Shinshu Roberts
Oh and I can’t forget
Einstein’s Dreams – Alan Lightman
Each of these dealt with time and out perception of it, what it is and what is actually happening from a different perspective.
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist.
Dainin Katagiri was a Sōtō Zen priest and teacher.
Shinshu Roberts is co-founder and teacher of Ocean Gate Zen Center in Capitola, CA.
Alan Paige Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur.
Let’s go back in time to the original question.
“How has your relationship to the concept of TIME changed (if it has) since not being suicidal?”
After the avalanche, my relationship and understanding of time became something other.
If we assume past, present and future are separate things. If we lug around the past like a big old steamer trunk full of psychological detritus, we end up polluting the present with this overflowing garbage and thus changing the future to look a hell of a lot like the past.
This assumes time is a continuum, past precedes present and future succeeds the present and the past.
What if they don’t behave like that. What if they all happen at the same TIME: Past, Present and Future all coalesced into something other.
Is the idea of the past just a memory?
If we can remember the past, why can’t we remember the future?
Maybe that’s what we need to do, remember the future and not remember the past. Or maybe even remember the NOW
Maybe the past isn’t what we think it is, after-all we all have heard that eye-witness testimony is not that great. And who is that witness anyway?
“The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.””
What do your puzzle pieces look like? Are they even all pieces of the same puzzle?
Are you assuming your disparate puzzle pieces actually are a video recording?
So, what is my relationship to TIME now?
The metaphor of the avalanche is no more.
I now stand at the edge of a calm mountain lake. I can see the reflections of all that surrounds me on the glimmering surface of the water. It’s a place of calm and quiet.