Time is a strange concept. I love thinking about time because it takes my relentless mind on some rather crazy journeys. I get to the point where I can no longer fathom time as a concept and all its relative weirdness. I’ve had the theory for several years now that time is best represented by a 3-dimensional sphere. Our minds merely perceive time as passing linearly. Imagine your time on this earth as a big ball. Inside is every experience, thought, and memory you will ever have. The mind then spends its time (ironic?) sorting it out and trying to put it into logical order because…let’s face it, that’s just what minds do!
There are moments when we touch the non-linear fragments of time, but our logical mind cannot understand it. For example, I am convinced that ideas are absolutely non-linear. You may touch on an idea and decades later it comes back as if it were hovering in the back of your brain all this time. My current novel is very much this way. Most of the characters were conceived over 20 years ago. And I mean every vivid detail of them was alive way back then. But for some weird reason they resurfaced now in the form of a book. Strange.
Have you ever had the experience of loosing touch with a friend only to have her reappear in your life years later? But what is amazing about this experience is the moment you are in the company of your old friend you feel as if no time has passed at all. You pick up right where you left off with that person. On one hand it is a very bizarre phenomenon, but on the other totally natural.
We also have the experience of “deja vu”; meeting someone new who seems familiar, or being in a place you’re sure you’ve been before…but haven’t. Perhaps you are merely remembering something that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe in your spherical time ball you caught sight of an experience, but then your mind quickly filed it under “put this one at a future date”.
I mention this here because I think it’s fascinating and it’s been happening a lot to me lately. Old ideas resurfacing, past people popping back into my life, and meeting new people and experiences that I just know have some sort of significance, I just don’t know what yet. Yet time just keeps marching on like a merciless soldier, heading toward some linear end point. Very strange.
*Yep. These are the things my mind thinks about when winter starts getting too long. In case you were wondering.
Hubby and I were just talking about this concept of time–after watching an episode of LOST, of course– in relation to time travel and the idea that time is non linear which is why time travel might be possible. Definitely hard to wrap your mind around. When I think very hard about it my brain always starts to shut down. As a person who has no concept of time anyway, I usually end up thinking, I’ll never figure any of this out. But it’s fun to ponder, especially when winter has been dragging on a little too long.
I love your thoughts Torrie, I have thought the same thing on many occasions, but never for long and in as much detail because daily life gets in the way and my mind gets hijacked with thoughts of “why are the kids being so quiet?” or “what in the world am I going to make for dinner?” I like your thinking better