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| Original Cover of Walden |
Time is relative.
Isn’t everything? It’s all a matter of perspective and perception. Sir Isaac Newton found that time is absolute, “flowing uniformly for all observers," while Albert Einstein found time to be relative, related to gravity and velocity. Hello, Isaac and Albert, but I do not understand Newton’s concept of Absolute Time nor Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I do know my experience of time is slower when I am enduring things unpleasant or boring, and faster when enjoying the joyful and pleasant things in life.
I once heard John Lennon describe time as, "that which keeps everything from happening at once.”
Imagine that!
Now in my late 70’s, looking back on my life, I can say that time went absolutely and relatively quickly. Seems to me an average lifespan is not long enough. Long enough for what? Maybe to have experienced time more in the present than in the future or the past?
"Time is a but a stream I go a-fishing in.” Hello, Henry David Thoreau, whose thoughts are far easier to grasp than are Einstein’s, Newton’s, or John Lennon’s for that matter. Thoreau’s statement in Walden: or a Life in Woods is worth further consideration, as are: "There is more to life than increasing its speed” and "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Thoreau's description of time as a stream to go fishing in suggests that time just "IS," and we can leisurely cast in and out of its eternal waters, pulling out what we will without an awareness of time itself.” What would Thoreau have to say about how we live now? By the calendar and clock for our day, week, month and year, crammed with obligations, responsibilities, urgencies, distractions and pre-occupations.
How much more so is our speed and desperation, with the nation/world in seeming chaos, and we intent on “getting it all done”—maybe stressed, anxious and often neglectful of more important demands and pleasures of the mind, heart and soul; of each other, and of the gifts of nature? When we find time, or make it, we are on our devices with apps downloaded for everything imaginable--scrolling social media or news, playing video games or binge-watching TV.
Yep! We have once again been cast out of The Garden, having taken a huge bite of an Apple of another kind!
There seems to be no end in sighjt—unless we stop to dip into “the stream," forgetting that time exists at all. Thoreau's thoughts are still relevant today, except that our desperation is not "quiet." It's loud and clear; the pace of life has exponentially escalated!
Thoreau saw where we were headed at the speed of light. And yet, how could he have imagined that we would be headed back to the future, going chronologically forward in time, but stuck in unaddressed grievances from the Civil War, and ongoing racial, gender, and human rights concerns?
Don’t get me started!
We live in the present, yet, our thoughts are most often focused on the past or future. Remaining “in the moment” is difficult, which becomes obvious when we attempt to meditate or clear our minds of brain chatter. Being in the present seems more possible when we are in love (with a person or a project). Then no one or nothing else exists. Being present also seems more possible when we are with children, who compel us (if we are attentive and follow their lead) to live and love each moment, mostly in the imagination of play and the thrill of discovery.
I became well aware of “not-living-in-the-present” mode when visiting our four-year old grandson, Finn. I told him I would be leaving “tomorrow” and that I would be sad to leave. Without skipping a beat, he said, “It’s not tomorrow now.” The simple truth of Finn’s words penetrated my being. I had rather selfishly imposed the future on him when he lives only in the present. He urged me to be truly with him—not to worry about “tomorrow," rather to experience the joy of our being together in the here and now.
When my mind is filled with the past and future, or drifts off to realize the absurdity of our existence on our little blue planet, orbiting our sun star, spinning madly through dark, cold, infinite space, I have to stop, put up my imaginary "Gone Fishin" sign and be still—sit under a tree, gaze at the starry sky. As my mind is calmed and silenced, I begin to “just be” to feel the warmth of the sun, the coolness of a breeze, to hear the sound of lake water lapping the shore, or, at summer’s end, to hear the crickets, “so thin a splinter of singing.”* Then I exist in “timelessness,” transcending time in the present where, “time touches eternity.” *
Until I again enter the madly spinning world where, actually, everything IS happening at once!
*Notes
"So thin a splinter of singing," "Splinter,” Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems, 1916.
"The Present is the point at which time touches eternity,” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis, 1942.
Sandra Williams
