I went to my wife’s former middle school today to spend some time with the kids. Before I went she reminded me that she used to roam those halls a mere 21 years ago. So as I roamed the halls I was trying to imagine her running around between classes, chatting with her girlfriends, all wide eyed about her unknown future and her life ahead of her. Now in her mid-thirties, I know that most people would agree that she still has her life ahead of her, as I am sure a 100 year old might say that to a 70 year old. But what if we all had a life expectancy of 150 years? How would that change the way we looked at our lives at 65? We would ‘expect’ to barely have gone past the first third of our life. Would we still retire then? Would we maybe take a break from work for a couple of decades only to start another career? Would we wait with having kids until we’re in our fifties? Think about how everything would change with that shifted expectation in mind.

At the same time, we could always die ‘prematurely,’ just as we do now. We could sit and wonder about where time has gone by the time we’re 140 and in different ways prepare for the impending ‘end.’ So in a way nothing would change. I think that’s very human of us. We are the only beings we know about who can think about themselves in a fully conscious way and ask ourselves who we are, why we’re here and what it’s all about. With that comes our very acute sense and obsession with time. We know that time is relative – ten minutes waiting for bad news feels like an hour, while spending an hour with a loved one can feel like a second – but we never really consider how incredible that very difference is.

Nothing lasts. Absolutely nothing. Countless processes are at work in our bodies at any moment, as there are countless more on the planet. Things coming and going all the time. Any thought we have comes and goes in a flash, and unless we could remember to repeat a thought, we would remain like babies. So this is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but it happens automatically and we don’t have to do anything to be able to function very well as a human being. Where it gets challenging is when we get lost in time and try to create a sense of permanence around what we call ‘me’ to feel more real. You know, like telling stories with old friends about the ‘good old days,’ looking at pictures from past adventures, thinking about the things we have achieved, etc. Then we add to this ideas about our future, things we want to achieve, places we want to go, things we want for ourselves and others. All of this is inherently done to make ourselves feel more real, more permanent. It’s because we live our lives solely within the time bound confines of birth-to-death. In this model that past and the future is what defines us, what makes us unique. Without the past and future we would not exist, because there would be no reference point, no ‘content’ to our lives.

But what if we lived our lives in the relativity of time? What would change? Think about that. We would be present-bound, not time-bound. We would still have memories of the past and thoughts about the future, but we wouldn’t be them. We would be here and now, period. Our ability to remember things would simply enable us to live our life, but they would not be us. Time would become as immaterial to us as it truly is. There is a lot of freedom in that. Ask any older person who is deeply content and happy, how they feel about time. I think in their own words they will tell you that nothing is permanent, and that all they enjoy is the moment. Nothing is eternal. Everything is temporary. It’s all eternally temporary.

Depending on how you live your life, that can be deeply disconcerting or deeply reassuring.

Cheers,

Ralf