GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM

Time is relative. Isn’t everything? It’s all a matter of perspective. Time goes faster or slower depending on velocity and gravity: Hello Einstein, or was it Newton? Not that I understand the theory of relativity or Newton’s concept of absolute time, but I do think we all experience time as passing more quickly when we are exeriencing something pleasant and enjoyable, and more slowly in situations of discomfort of any kind. 

    I like the definition,"Time keeps everything from happening at once." (variously attributed to Mark Twain, John Lennon and even Einstein).  Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Time is a stream I a go a-fishing in." which suggests that time is just there to leisurely dip into and out of without worry about passing, wasting, or running out of it. He observed, even in Concord at that time, a sense of urgency around time. The world was in rush, and that meant neglect of the things of the mind and heart. For him that was solitude and living simply, close to nature in his beloved woods.

  What would he think of the way we live now? Now-- dependent on cell phones, social media, email, video games, TV, and an app for everything imaginable (and more yet to be imagined) and working overtime. Thoreau saw where we were headed (and still are at  speed of light)We have indeed been cast out of "The Garden,” having taken a big bite of an Apple of another kind.

    Although we live in the present, our thoughts and feelings mostly revolve around the past or the future, causing anxiety about what could have been accomplished, yet to be done.    Thus, focusing on the present is difficult. Have you noticed, though, that living in the present seems to happen when we fall in love—when no one or nothing exists but our beloved, or when we are with children, partly because we must to tend to all of their present needs and activities, of which play is certainly one of them. 

     Children compel us, if we are attentive and responsive to live and love and in doing so, we transcend time. We are unaware of it. To quote another voice: “For the present is the point at which time touches eternity.” (C.S. Lewis)

  Once when my grandson Finn was about four years old, I told him I would be going home “tomorrow,” and that it made me sad.  With the wisdom of childhood, he said, “It’s not tomorrow now.” That penetrated to the core of my being.  I realized I was trying to impose the future on him when he, rightfully so, lived only in the present, the “now,” as children and lovers do. 
     Finn challenged me into doing the same—to be with him in the here and now—no worries, only the joy of each other’s company.  As adults, we refer to the calendar and clock for our day, week, month and year, getting the children to school, catching the bus, preparing that report, making phone calls, keeping appointments, planning way too far ahead--with no end in sight. 

Can we not so much “take time,” but forget time and the absurdity of our spinning on a blue planet madly through the dark, cold expanding universe into what, into where? Can we “just be,” sit quietly under the stars, or under a tree with a friend, calm ourselves before sleep or upon waking, live in the present with or without children or lovers?  

  There is the silence, the warmth, the breeze, the sound of the sea for a timeless time—before we dip back into that stream, where, actually, everything is happening at once. Splash!