Time Ravel
by Barbara Hale
February 21, 2021
I did a bit of time traveling recently, but not in the scientific or cosmic sense. I sent a box of old 8mm video tapes to a company and had them digitized. The company sent them back to me via email so I could download and watch them instantly. Pretty amazing technology really.
In another wonder of modern life, my daughter Carrie and I were able to spend a few hours together on Zoom looking back and chuckling about how much her hair was the spitting image of Boris Johnson's when she was three or four years old. But she was way cuter than Johnson and, though I may be biased, she might just be smarter in many ways.
But I also got to see my old Grandma Ginny sit in her rocker and tell us about the new apartment that she was living in at my Aunt Gerri's hotel in Malone, New York, and my father at the hot air balloon festival in Middletown, Ohio, where I grew up. I got to watch my mother and her three sisters joyfully singing old standards at the piano and my deceased husband Greg holding his newborn son.
The history of our lives in video form.
It’s fun and poignant to look back. Seeing the way our tastes change over time. Different hairdos and clothing styles. The way the kids’ personalities evolve. The antics of our furry friends who have departed us.
But the truth is that we rarely film ourselves at our worst times so old videos are not really history. We film happy occasions. The kids at their cutest not when they are throwing hissy fits. The house decorated for the holidays not cluttered with the detritus of everyday life. Our parents when they are younger and thriving.
The truth is that life is a slog much of the time and not at all camera worthy. We all live through times that are truly hurtful and hard. Fortunately for many of us, those times are sprinkled with songs and roast turkeys and people laughing over inside jokes and pictures of us standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon.
But here is reality. Unfortunately, for many the time away from the camera can have lasting and detrimental effects on lives. The hard times can leave permanent scars. The pains of life can make a difference as to whether we are able to view the present fully, humanely, and positively and for some of us, whether we can even envision a future at all.
And what about the future?
Some humans like to time travel to the future. I know I do. As a Star Trek fan, I like to imagine a world where things are settled more often by science, reason and intellect than by superstition, fisticuffs and weaponry.
But of course, being a somewhat normal human means that the downside of time traveling to the future for me is worrying about what is going to happen to myself and the people I care about in imagined situations that whirl through my head at 3:00 in the morning. What if I forget something that’s really important as I am wont to do now as I get older? What if I get ill? Who will take care of my dog? What if the new Covid strain isn’t covered by the vaccine? You know the drill. Yours may be different from mine, but they are still the eternal, infernal what if.
I recently came across a cartoon in one of my New Yorker magazines. It pictured two dandelions in full seed standing together in a field. One has a worried look on his face and the other is saying, “The wind, the wind, that’s all you think about – you gotta learn to live in the moment.” It made me think of this advice attributed to the Buddha: The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
So often it is suggested to us that we try to quote live in the present unquote for our happiness and mental well-being and try not to time travel at all. Or to get schmaltzy about it. “Tomorrow is a mystery. Yesterday is history. Live today, it’s a gift, that’s why they call it ‘present’.”
Well, that’s all well and good, but let’s face it, the wind is going to blow whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Many of us work our whole lives on letting go of past events that have profoundly impacted us with varying degrees of success. Most of us worry about what is going to happen in the future. That’s part of the human condition.
I found an article online that talks about this challenge on a more global scale. David J. Orenstein, who is the American Humanist Association’s representative to the United Nations, puts forward the idea that we collectively often live too much in the present allowing ourselves to let others feed us our history and worry about our future so that we have little independent knowledge and little informed input into what is actually happening now.
Orenstein posits that “the way we’ve structured society leaves little energy or time for the majority of our species to contemplate or truly understand the implications of our history and our future.” Our society is stratified, according to Orenstein, leaving others with the tasks of understanding our history and planning for our future while leaving many of us free to live day to day “ill-informed, and sometimes even hostile, to our past and future.”
When I think about recent events in our country, I believe Orenstein may be right. We are often encouraged to place ourselves in the present moment without taking the time to wonder how we got here or where we will go if we don’t try to understand the road we are on. As a society, we don’t think enough about what brought us to the present moment or what we need to do to prepare for a better future for ourselves and our fellow humans. After all, don’t we feel that everything is going to be all right if we are happy and content now?
I don’t think that Orenstein is saying that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves in the present moment. He acknowledges that studying history or working toward a secure future does little to help people with the immediate problems of securing food for their families now and paying their rent now. For those of us who are lucky enough to not have to worry about such things, a practice of meditation, a break from the news, a nice long vacation are certainly good for us and our well-being. And such things can help us maintain our equilibrium as we try to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going.
When I look at the way our history has played out for Indigenous Americans and for other people of color, I feel that I must mourn for the past and study it so I know when we are headed in the wrong direction. Not knowing or caring could give me a smug sense of complacency or cause me to act selfishly if I think that someone else is getting something that I feel I deserve.
When I watch the news at night, I have no choice but to worry about the future and anticipate troubles, because right now there are troubles at every turn, it seems. Being aware gives me incentive to act as I am able to work toward economic and racial justice in the world.
The Buddha is right however that we do need to live wisely and earnestly right now.
Orenstein considers this with a few positive ifs. He writes:
If you want to have an adroit and powerful global consciousness that respects science, the universe, and our collective history, then we must create it based on humanistic good will towards all. If we want the flame of youth to be invigorated equally by the past and also the possibilities of the future then we must give our students the time and space they need to develop their individual interests in the arts, humanities, and the sciences.
So here is how I suggest we must move forward, he continues. The conundrum rests in these five points as follows:
You know, when we are young, we often feel the way David Windle describes in his poem that was our reading today. It seems easier to live in the present when the world is your oyster. Looking back, many of us remember the “pleasure of free-falling, parachuteless, as the world swirled above us before sliding out of sight.” But maybe it’s time to catch ourselves before we fall further. Because:
A lot of water’s flowed under this particular bridge
And things have changed:
The unshatterable certainty of safe return
Doesn’t come so freely anymore,
And more often than not
I feel alarm at the sudden shift
In gravity and the cosmic hand
Placed upon my back
Pushing me through the letterbox
Between daylight and darkness.
In the future I hope to find
My freedom again, to get my mojo back;
You may think that’s an odd thing
For a time traveller to say?
Surely, the future is here today,
If I want it to be?
Well, time travel doesn’t work like that,
It’s far more complicated than you think,
And currently
The only guide I have to follow is me.
*http://www.primarypoems.com/
**https://thehumanist.com/commentary/a-meditation-we-must-grow-past-our-inabilities-to-learn-from-history-or-accept-the-value-of-science?fbclid=IwAR0STlUtbLKDZALTguF9IUrmfh_-CnhUgHdy3A1q9rJFfyd629UfG9Mb3nQ
by Barbara Hale
February 21, 2021
I did a bit of time traveling recently, but not in the scientific or cosmic sense. I sent a box of old 8mm video tapes to a company and had them digitized. The company sent them back to me via email so I could download and watch them instantly. Pretty amazing technology really.
In another wonder of modern life, my daughter Carrie and I were able to spend a few hours together on Zoom looking back and chuckling about how much her hair was the spitting image of Boris Johnson's when she was three or four years old. But she was way cuter than Johnson and, though I may be biased, she might just be smarter in many ways.
But I also got to see my old Grandma Ginny sit in her rocker and tell us about the new apartment that she was living in at my Aunt Gerri's hotel in Malone, New York, and my father at the hot air balloon festival in Middletown, Ohio, where I grew up. I got to watch my mother and her three sisters joyfully singing old standards at the piano and my deceased husband Greg holding his newborn son.
The history of our lives in video form.
It’s fun and poignant to look back. Seeing the way our tastes change over time. Different hairdos and clothing styles. The way the kids’ personalities evolve. The antics of our furry friends who have departed us.
But the truth is that we rarely film ourselves at our worst times so old videos are not really history. We film happy occasions. The kids at their cutest not when they are throwing hissy fits. The house decorated for the holidays not cluttered with the detritus of everyday life. Our parents when they are younger and thriving.
The truth is that life is a slog much of the time and not at all camera worthy. We all live through times that are truly hurtful and hard. Fortunately for many of us, those times are sprinkled with songs and roast turkeys and people laughing over inside jokes and pictures of us standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon.
But here is reality. Unfortunately, for many the time away from the camera can have lasting and detrimental effects on lives. The hard times can leave permanent scars. The pains of life can make a difference as to whether we are able to view the present fully, humanely, and positively and for some of us, whether we can even envision a future at all.
And what about the future?
Some humans like to time travel to the future. I know I do. As a Star Trek fan, I like to imagine a world where things are settled more often by science, reason and intellect than by superstition, fisticuffs and weaponry.
But of course, being a somewhat normal human means that the downside of time traveling to the future for me is worrying about what is going to happen to myself and the people I care about in imagined situations that whirl through my head at 3:00 in the morning. What if I forget something that’s really important as I am wont to do now as I get older? What if I get ill? Who will take care of my dog? What if the new Covid strain isn’t covered by the vaccine? You know the drill. Yours may be different from mine, but they are still the eternal, infernal what if.
I recently came across a cartoon in one of my New Yorker magazines. It pictured two dandelions in full seed standing together in a field. One has a worried look on his face and the other is saying, “The wind, the wind, that’s all you think about – you gotta learn to live in the moment.” It made me think of this advice attributed to the Buddha: The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
So often it is suggested to us that we try to quote live in the present unquote for our happiness and mental well-being and try not to time travel at all. Or to get schmaltzy about it. “Tomorrow is a mystery. Yesterday is history. Live today, it’s a gift, that’s why they call it ‘present’.”
Well, that’s all well and good, but let’s face it, the wind is going to blow whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Many of us work our whole lives on letting go of past events that have profoundly impacted us with varying degrees of success. Most of us worry about what is going to happen in the future. That’s part of the human condition.
I found an article online that talks about this challenge on a more global scale. David J. Orenstein, who is the American Humanist Association’s representative to the United Nations, puts forward the idea that we collectively often live too much in the present allowing ourselves to let others feed us our history and worry about our future so that we have little independent knowledge and little informed input into what is actually happening now.
Orenstein posits that “the way we’ve structured society leaves little energy or time for the majority of our species to contemplate or truly understand the implications of our history and our future.” Our society is stratified, according to Orenstein, leaving others with the tasks of understanding our history and planning for our future while leaving many of us free to live day to day “ill-informed, and sometimes even hostile, to our past and future.”
When I think about recent events in our country, I believe Orenstein may be right. We are often encouraged to place ourselves in the present moment without taking the time to wonder how we got here or where we will go if we don’t try to understand the road we are on. As a society, we don’t think enough about what brought us to the present moment or what we need to do to prepare for a better future for ourselves and our fellow humans. After all, don’t we feel that everything is going to be all right if we are happy and content now?
I don’t think that Orenstein is saying that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves in the present moment. He acknowledges that studying history or working toward a secure future does little to help people with the immediate problems of securing food for their families now and paying their rent now. For those of us who are lucky enough to not have to worry about such things, a practice of meditation, a break from the news, a nice long vacation are certainly good for us and our well-being. And such things can help us maintain our equilibrium as we try to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going.
When I look at the way our history has played out for Indigenous Americans and for other people of color, I feel that I must mourn for the past and study it so I know when we are headed in the wrong direction. Not knowing or caring could give me a smug sense of complacency or cause me to act selfishly if I think that someone else is getting something that I feel I deserve.
When I watch the news at night, I have no choice but to worry about the future and anticipate troubles, because right now there are troubles at every turn, it seems. Being aware gives me incentive to act as I am able to work toward economic and racial justice in the world.
The Buddha is right however that we do need to live wisely and earnestly right now.
Orenstein considers this with a few positive ifs. He writes:
If you want to have an adroit and powerful global consciousness that respects science, the universe, and our collective history, then we must create it based on humanistic good will towards all. If we want the flame of youth to be invigorated equally by the past and also the possibilities of the future then we must give our students the time and space they need to develop their individual interests in the arts, humanities, and the sciences.
So here is how I suggest we must move forward, he continues. The conundrum rests in these five points as follows:
- If we can give the time and energy necessary to grow our human connections we can limit tribalism and hostile stratification. We can empower a global humanity of thinkers and builders
- If we’re willing to give the time and space to douse the willful assumption that there must be social and economic winners and losers in this world, we can move past despair and bring hope to generations.
- If we can give time and opportunity to remove fears or stigma of facts, which always subverts understanding of the natural world and breeds mistrust of those who bring knowledge forward, then we can educate and prepare the globe for a bright and intellectually robust future.
- If we can give time and energy to understand our past through reason and knowledge based on evidence rather than conjecture or self-serving bias, we won’t be afraid to confront our past ills and we certainly won’t bring pain and suffering to others in the future.
- If we can give time and energy to fully understand how technology works to sustain and improve our lives, it is unlikely we will use that same technology to harm ourselves. We will then combine our imagination, our will and our tools to fully explore our planet and worlds way beyond our present grasp.**
-
You know, when we are young, we often feel the way David Windle describes in his poem that was our reading today. It seems easier to live in the present when the world is your oyster. Looking back, many of us remember the “pleasure of free-falling, parachuteless, as the world swirled above us before sliding out of sight.” But maybe it’s time to catch ourselves before we fall further. Because:
A lot of water’s flowed under this particular bridge
And things have changed:
The unshatterable certainty of safe return
Doesn’t come so freely anymore,
And more often than not
I feel alarm at the sudden shift
In gravity and the cosmic hand
Placed upon my back
Pushing me through the letterbox
Between daylight and darkness.
In the future I hope to find
My freedom again, to get my mojo back;
You may think that’s an odd thing
For a time traveller to say?
Surely, the future is here today,
If I want it to be?
Well, time travel doesn’t work like that,
It’s far more complicated than you think,
And currently
The only guide I have to follow is me.
*http://www.primarypoems.com/
**https://thehumanist.com/commentary/a-meditation-we-must-grow-past-our-inabilities-to-learn-from-history-or-accept-the-value-of-science?fbclid=IwAR0STlUtbLKDZALTguF9IUrmfh_-CnhUgHdy3A1q9rJFfyd629UfG9Mb3nQ