One of the things my wife and I like to do together is attend performances at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. We consider attending plays one of our better date activities because it provides us with an opportunity to break out of our normal routines and have engaging conversations together about the moments in the performances that stirred our emotions or stimulated our minds.
Recently we attended a two-man play called Best Summer Ever that was written and performed by Kevin Kling – an accomplished playwright, storyteller, and contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. Kling is an ebullient personality and there is something childlike, mischievous, and endearing about him that works to win over his audiences from the start.
One of Kevin’s most admirable qualities is his attitude towards overcoming the physical disabilities that are a part of his life. He was born with a congenital birth defect that shriveled his left arm and left it without a wrist or thumb. Then, at the age of 44, Kevin was in a motorcycle accident that completely paralyzed his right arm and disfigured his face.
Kling is open about his disabilities and tries to explain, with humor, the blessings he has derived from his misfortunes and the benefits that can come from tackling life’s obstacles with faith and a positive attitude. His family and friends stood by him while he recovered from his motorcycle accident and years of rehab.
“It’s hard to deny the power of prayer when you’re on the receiving end of it. I know it helped me heal. At times it was like skiing behind a power boat — all I had to do was hang on… As terrible [as my injuries were] and as scared as I am sometimes, I still feel blessed. And when I get discouraged I just look at my two wiener dogs because they are the best example of a ‘can do’ attitude in a ‘can’t do’ body.
Kevin Kling
Kling separates the disabilities that we are born with from those disabilities we acquire later in life and he points out that being so-called “able-bodied” is always just a temporary condition – sooner or later we are all likely to suffer from life’s frailties. He feels that when you are born with a disability, you grow from it, but when you experience a loss later in life, you have to grow toward it; you need time to grow into the new person you haven’t yet become.
Kevin wrote “The Best Summer Ever” as a way of growing toward the new person he was becoming after his accident. He does this by going back and telling the heartwarming story of his 9 year childhood journey growing up as the son of Norwegian immigrants in rural Minnesota. Exploring his childhood from this perspective became a kind of therapy; helping him to find pieces from his past to fit, not the person he was, but the new person he was becoming.
There were two moments from the play that stood out in my mind as reflections of the kind of positive wisdom Kevin had to share about life with his audience:
We all have a deep desire to feel connected, no matter what age
There is a scene in the play where 9 year old Kevin tries his best to comfort his aging grandfather who is grieving the death of his brother. Kevin is trying to understand why his grandfather is so sad and comes to the realization that his grandfather must feel like an orphan now because his mother, father and all his siblings are now gone. He is the last one of his family left.
How must it feel when the people you had the strongest connection to throughout your life are no longer here? I wonder about my 93 year old mother. After living through the deaths of her mother, father and seven siblings, does she feel like an orphan in some way? Despite her many children and grandchildren, is she happily looking forward to re-establishing connections again with her family on the other side?
Kevin talks fondly about his grandparents and the role they played in his life, saying his relationship with them was one of his strongest connections and one that most shaped who he became:
“I connected with my grandparents. And I think we were in the same light. I mean, I was in the dawn, and they were in the twilight, but we were in the same light. And because of that, they were heading to the creator, and I was coming from the creator. And it seemed, because of that, we spoke a very similar language.“
Live so that your Light outlives you
At the conclusion of the play, Kevin is looking at a nighttime sky full of shining stars and marvels that since the stars are so far away it takes hundreds or thousands of years for their light to reach the earth. This means that those of us left on on earth will continue to receive light from the stars even after they are long dead.
Kevin believes that the light from people can live on after they die too. The good that we do, and the light we share will outlive us if we act to make a positive difference in the lives of the people we love and take meaningful action against the injustice we see in the world.
When Kevin looks up at those stars at night he is happy to feel the presence and memories of his grandparents and parents shining down on him. I hope when you look up at the stars, you too can take comfort and feel gratitude for the connections you had with your loved ones. But more important I hope you are living the kind of life that will continue to shine light long after you are gone. When you think about it, being a light for someone else is one way for us to become immortal.
Humans have reached a point in their evolution where they can use technology to manufacture artificial climate silosin their homes, cars, and workplaces that insulate them from the effects of uncomfortable weather conditions. Even on the field of play, athletes labor under precisely controlled environmental conditions designed to prevent their performances from being disrupted by wild card weather elements.
This capability to create our own ideal environment is a relatively new phenomenon. It was only 250 years ago when the first efficient wood stoves were invented and only 100 years ago in the 1920’s when cars started to be mass produced. My mother who is 93 grew up in a house that had no indoor plumbing or home heating (except for the kitchen stove). The first new car I bought in 1982 did not come with air conditioning.
Back then, weather conditions were a big deal because you couldn’t avoid them. It was not really possible to separate life’s activities from the daily whims of Mother Nature. By necessity, people were exposed to the elements every day and had to learn to adjust their lives according to the ever-changing weather conditions.
They never knew what surprise weather conditions they would have to face when they woke up and would have been astonished at the advances in the meteorological sciences which gives us the capability to predict future weather events.
Today, we take it for granted that we can get accurate weekly, daily and hourly weather forecasts for any location in the world; but the value of this foresight is diminished by the fact that most people don’t even bother to check weather forecasts any more because our technology can overcome the weather. The outside weather now has very little impact on our life.
I was not sheltered from the weather when I was growing up. I had a paper route that required me to get up before sunrise to deliver newspapers to the homes in my neighborhood. Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall under hot, cold, rain or snowy conditions I delivered those papers. I walked to school on the other side of town in all kinds of weather conditions. I camped out with my friends in their backyards, at the city playground, and at the town cemetery. I spent many hours out in nature fishing, hiking and trapping with my father and brothers.
It is a shame, I think, that most people try to avoid having any direct exposure to the elements. I think the avoidance of what many people refer to as “bad weather” has taken some of the fun, excitement and wonder out of living. Some of the most memorable moments in my life have occurred when I stepped outside to embrace the elements head on.
Moments such as:
Laughing while running with my children through the puddles on my street in my bare feet and shorts during a rain storm that broke up a prolonged heat wave.
Paddling down a frosty river in an aluminum canoe during a cold and windy November afternoon to help my older brother check his trapline – my hands and feet numb from the 10 below zero wind chill.
Walking home from a card game at a friend’s house during the great Blizzard of 1978 and losing my sense of direction in the whiteout conditions.
Riding around with my Dad in a DPW snow plow, cleaning up the streets of the city after a big snow storm.
Fly Fishing in the middle of a rain storm, catching one trout after another, only stopping when a bolt of lightning suddenly came down out of the sky and struck a tree on the other side of the river, setting it on fire.
Walking home from my job late at night in the middle of a light snow flurry and being mesmerized by the big snowflakes doing a dance as they floated slowly down illuminated by the parking lot flood lights.
Listening to the rain fall on the roof of my tent while camping – the repetitive sounds of the rain drops lulling me to sleep.
Playing soccer with my colleagues after work during the steaming dog days of summer and drenching ourselves with water (and cold beer) to cool down.
Standing in the face of gale force winds at the top of Mount Monadnock while doing some Fall hiking – the temperature 50 degrees cooler at the top than it was at the base of the mountain.
Sure, I was wet and cold or uncomfortable from the sun, heat and wind during many of these moments; but that is what made the moments even more memorable to me. We become so used to our creature comforts and living within such a narrow range of climate conditions, that it becomes remarkable to us when we choose to step outside and expose our bodies and our senses to something new and different.
I’m glad that I was taught not to fear bad weather, otherwise I never would have gathered first hand experience of the fury and majesty of our remarkable planet. I am in agreement with Alfred Wainwright who once wrote “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”.
Wainwright was an author, illustrator and naturist who devised the popular Coast to Coast walk in England. A shy and unhappy kid, Alfred hated to be inside. To escape, he began walking up to 20 miles at a time; and creating detailed maps and drawings of his local area and all the places he visited in England.
Wainwright believed that the precious moments of life are rare and to be treasured:
“The precious moments of life are too rare…we should hoard them as a miser hoards his gold, and bring them to light and rejoice over them often. We should all of us have a treasury of happy memories to sustain us …to be stars shining through the darkness.”
He also believed that direct exposure to nature in all its forms was one of the the surest pathways to create happy memories:
“Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this; the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf? This is something to be lived, not read about. On these breezy heights, a transformation is wondrously wrought within you. Your thoughts are simple, in tune with your surroundings; the complicated problems you brought with you from the town are smoothed away. Up here, you are near to your Creator; you are conscious of the infinite; you gain new perspectives; thoughts run in new strange channels; there are stirrings in your soul which are quite beyond the power of my pen to describe. Something happens to you in the silent places which never could in the towns, and it is a good thing to sit awhile in a quiet spot and meditate. The hills have a power to soothe and heal which is their very own. No man ever sat alone on the top of a hill and planned a murder or a robbery, and no man ever came down from the hills without feeling in some way refreshed, and the better for his experience.”
Alfred Wainwright
So if you want to create new perspectives and feel a powerful stirring in your soul, I suggest you take Mr. Wainwright’s advice and find yourself some suitable clothing that allows you to get out and experience the weather in all its forms. Be one of the people who feels the rain and not one of the crowd who just gets wet!
In an attempt to make more meaningful the days I have left, I have started a practice that I call Memorable & Admirable. It is a pretty simple practice; when I turn in for the evening, I lie in bed and think back over my day and I ask myself two questions:
Did I do anything today that was memorable?
Did I do anything today that was admirable?
On a good day I can usually single out one or two events that happened during the course of my day that I considered to be memorable and/or admirable.
But on many nights I do struggle to identify even a single memorable or admirable event that occurred during the course of my day. On those nights, I regret the day’s lost opportunities and find myself making resolutions to do a better job tomorrow.
All of us live with unforgettable memories; our first kiss, our graduation from college, our first job, our wedding day, the birth of our first child and grandchild. Those once-in-a-lifetime events have a powerful emotional impact on us because they enrich our life, bond us to others and help to define who we are.
Those big moments occur so rarely that they become burned into our memories. Research shows that most older people, when they look back on their lives, recall most of their big memories happening between the ages of 15 and 30 – a very narrow window that comprises less than 20% of the average lifespan.
Is it because our memory is sharper when we are younger? No. It’s because most of us settle into a routine by our 30’s and life begins to lose its zest. I am typical I suppose, being in my 60’s, and finding it difficult to recall many memorable life events that occurred in my late 30’s.
It is easy to get trapped into a routine where habit begins to take over our lives. One day follows another, one month rolls into the next, we get lazy following comfortable patterns – and then before you know it, the calendar rolls over to a new year and we find ourselves wondering where the time went. The months and years begin to blur together because nothing new and shiny happens in our life.
I have learned that if you want to slow down time, you have to work at creating memories – you cannot leave it to chance. Chip Heath, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and co-author of the book The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact provides suggestions on how people can inject novelty into their life and create experiences that become both memorable and meaningful.
Stimulate the Senses
Engaging our senses can make moments stand out more intensely. This is why concerts, museums and great meals stick in our memories and why sitting on the couch is so forgettable.
I remember, as if it was yesterday, standing 5 feet from the stage watching Bob Dylan play the piano and sing his Gospel song “Pressing On” in a small Worcester Auditorium when I was just 21 years old; and 36 years later listening to the wall of inspired sound created by Neil Young & Crazy Horse as they rocked a packed Boston concert audience.
I also have lasting memories from my youth of tasting fresh rhubarb, carrots and tomatoes right out of the garden; and when I was much older, of eating scorpions, chicken feet, drunken prawns, pepper crab and Schweinsbraten during my frequent international business trips.
When our bodies are stimulated by our faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, or touch – our brains work overtime to record the experience.
Raise the Stakes
Memories are more readily made when we participate in activities where we have something to gain or lose. Competing in a sporting event is more exciting than watching one and betting on a sporting event makes watching it more entertaining.
I remember tension-filled Dart tournaments where my performance made the difference between my team winning or losing the league trophy; as well as pleasant days spent at the race track with my father, studying the racing program and being thrilled when the dog I picked won their race.
And of course, there are the trunk full of memories I have from the family’s annual pressure-packed Pitch tournaments – the winners of which are crowned the reigning Pitch King & Queen with their names enshrined on the tournament jersey entitling them to bragging rights throughout the year. Every year the family has fun reminiscing about the exploits of past card tournaments.
When the stakes are raised, people pay attention.
Break the Script
In order to get past the routine autopilot of our day to day lives, we have to do something that will break the script. When we do something different we defy expectations and surprise people.
Chip Heath, in his book, described how Southwest Airlines broke the script when they changed the wording of their flight safety announcement. One of the lines they added was:
If you should get to use the life vest in a real-life situation, the vest is yours to keep.
People loved it and it got the typically distracted passengers to break off whatever they were doing and listen more closely to the safety announcement. Southwest reported that those who heard the new messages actually flew more, resulting in an extra $140 million per year in revenue for the company.
Breaking the script can produce delightful moments.
One such delightful moment in my life occurred because I happened to invite my wife to go trout fishing with my Dad and I. We had been fishing buddies for more than 40 years and we had a well-worn routine consisting of which separate stretches of the river we would fish and what we would pack for lunch (usually peanut butter crackers and a beer).
We broke the script by adding my wife to the mix. Her addition encouraged us to all fish together and when it came time for lunch she surprised us with a gourmet picnic comprised of cheese and crackers, shrimp, lobster sandwiches and wine. I’ll never forget my Dad’s eyes twinkling with mirth and bemusement as we sat on the blanket sipping our wine next to the singing river.
Celebrate Milestones
The best way to commemorate achievements is to celebrate them – especially with the people you like most. Research shows that our accomplishments take on increased meaning when we take the time to appreciate what we’ve accomplished.
So do something to celebrate those birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, promotions, retirements, etc. Don’t save the celebration for big events only.
Celebrating a silly milestones can be an effective way to “break the script” so that an event becomes even more memorable. My friend, who is a New York Yankees fan, used to have a 1918 party every year celebrating the last time the Boston Red Sox had won the World Series (fortunately he had to stop hosting that party in 2004).
For good measure, we can also set goals for ourselves that will lead to milestones we can celebrate at some point in the future. Doing that motivates us to achieve our goals and it leads to moments of pride that we will be able to celebrate in the future.
Overcoming Adversity
Why do armies put their recruits through high ordeal boot camp training and why do fraternities subject their pledges to harsh hazing? It is because struggling strengthens the bonds between people and experiencing adversity forms strong memory attachments in the brain.
I have vivid memories of all the crazy and senseless things I was asked to do when I pledged my college fraternity more than 42 years ago, but I have kept in contact with my fraternity “brothers” throughout all those years and we have fun reminiscing fondly about those youthful days.
For many years I was a volunteer member of a prison ministry team. We would spend exhausting 3-Day weekends conducting spiritual retreats inside Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire State Prison facilities.
It was hard work and the preparation was very time consuming, but some of the most spiritual moments of my life came while witnessing the prisoners and my ministry teammates share their faith stories over the course of the retreat.
So adversity can be a blessing if you want to create lasting memories – especially if you go through it with somebody else. You will be surprised how often you will look back fondly on times that you worked to help others fulfill their dreams – even though it seemed like a chore at the time.
Build Moments of Connection
For most people, it’s relationships with the people we love that brings us the most happiness. Vacations, reunions and holidays are ideal times to create moments of connection that will deepen our relationships with others.
To celebrate my parent’s 60th wedding anniversary in 2008 my siblings rented a beautiful Lake House and the whole family spent the week celebrating the love my parents had for each other and the loving sacrifices they made to raise 8 children.
Each of their children read a heartfelt letter honoring them and thanking them for all the happy memories and life lessons we learned from them while growing up.
The week spent together was magical; filled with fishing, peaceful boat rides, lobster and clam bakes, competitive kickball and card games, marriage renewal vows and joyous dancing. We formed a deep connection with one another during that week and it resulted in a lifetime of memories.
Moments of connection can be built on a large scale, like that Anniversary party or on a much smaller, but still meaningful scale. One such meaningful connection for me was when my teenage daughter was given a school assignment to bake a loaf of bread.
I was happy when she asked me to assist her with the project because it gave me an opportunity to spend meaningful time with her and to bond doing something together (plus I learned how to bake bread!).
Finally, you can build connections with others even if you don’t really know them. My wife, who works for a Hospice agency, told me about the time Bill Atkinson, a member of the NH Police Association Pipes and Drums and a Captain with Nashua Fire Rescue, came to the Community Hospice House and stood outside the facility playing a bagpipe concert for the patients and staff. The music could be heard from all four corners of the house – and you can bet that the staff and those residents facing life’s end were bonded in a holy moment of spiritual connection.
Admirable moments can also be memorable moments but not necessarily – and I think that is how it should be in most cases. We should do admirable things because it helps to make the world a better place – not because we are trying to create memories.
When I take inventory of my day, asking myself if I did anything that was admirable, my mind searches for moments when I went out of my way to do something that was unselfish, considered someone else’s needs rather than my own or made sacrifices to better myself or others.
Participating in these moments of introspection has led me to wonder about which character traits society as a whole should consider admirable. The ones that come most often to my mind are:
Honesty & Integrity – Try my best to be honest with myself and others. Be true to my word. Take ownership of my faults and failings.
Humility & Modesty – Remember that life is fragile and my time on earth is brief. In the vast scheme of things I am just a simple, insignificant person. Don’t brag about my accomplishments – act more, talk less.
Compassion – Imagine yourself in the other’s person’s shoes. Treat others the way you would like yourself to be treated.
Discipline & Hard Work – Good things come to those who are disciplined and willing to work hard. Fight the urge for instant gratification by pursuing long term satisfaction.
Courage – When we face trouble and problems in our life, it is natural to look for an easy way out. A person with courage tackles adversity head-on, not shrinking from the hard road, no matter where it leads.
Leadership – It takes a special person to stand up and give direction to others.
Humor – Don’t take life too seriously – try to laugh at yourself and the things around you once in a while.
Each of us may have a different list of qualities that we consider admirable, that is OK and that is what contributes to making different people so interesting. The point is that it is important for all of us to subscribe to a set of admirable ethics and to look for opportunities to practice them every day.
So good luck creating memories and practicing admirable acts in your life. I hope you will find that you also benefit from the happy side-effect I started experiencing when I began concentrating on my days memorable and admirable events at bedtime: Peaceful Dreams!
It’s finally Springtime here in the Northeast and this man’s fancy has turned to thoughts of fishing and of reconnecting with the rivers I have known since my youth.
My father was an avid outdoors man who spent most of his free time in nature – fishing during the Spring and Summer months; trapping muskrat, mink, raccoon, otter, beaver and fisher cat during the Fall; ice fishing during the long winter months.
Being the youngest of my father’s four sons, I knew that if I wanted to spend any time with the man I idolized, I would have to accompany him during his many woodland adventures. As I walked beside my father he would scan the forest floor and waterways for animal signs and tell me what he saw there – stories that made the forest come alive in my imagination .
My father’s favorite outdoor activity was fishing rivers for trout and it quickly became my favorite activity as well. Trout fishing was appealing to us because it required skill to entice the notoriously fussy fish to bite and once hooked trout put up a good fight and are a challenge to land – especially when you are using light tackle and you have to battle not only the fish and the river current, but also any submerged debris that lies unseen under the surface. On many days, we lost more trout than we landed.
The Author with his Father and Brother
My father introduced me to the sport gradually, letting me come along with him and two of my older brothers starting when I was ten years old. Over time he taught me how to tie knots, how to cast a spin rod and a fly rod, how to string live bait and how to fish with lures and flies.
The most important thing he taught me was how to read a river, to recognize the places in the river where trout are most likely to lie in wait – places like deep undercut banks, fallen trees, natural whirlpools behind submerged rocks and deep holes just behind shallow fast moving water.
For each of these river features he would explain the best way to present the bait so that it would appear most natural to the fish. He would tell me memorable stories from years past about the big fish he had caught at the spots where we were fishing. He would point out where to cast in the river for the best result and when I made a cast that met with his approval his eyes would sparkle and he would say; “That a boy – you should get a bite there!“.
When we waded a stream together, my father always let me fish the best spots and when we fished the river from a canoe he would insist that I take the front seat because it gave him more joy to see me catch a fish than it did to catch one himself.
And that is how I was introduced and grew to love all the best trout fishing rivers within a 3 hour drive of my home. The rivers Green, North, Swift, Millers, Ware, Tully, Deerfield, Cold, Ashuelot, Souhegan, Contoocook, Nissitisit, Squannacook, Lawrence and Priest.
I fished them with my father for 45 years, and I fish them now mostly alone – except for the strong presence of my Dad, whose spirit I still feel guiding me whenever I am fishing.
There is something almost magical about a river. If you think about it, a river is a moving, living part of the very earth itself and each river is endowed with its own personality. Some are fast and shallow, some are deep and slow, some meander aimlessly while others are direct and powerful.
Rivers are my happy place, a refuge from the demands of life and a humble reminder to me that life and time flows on despite all the small things we worry about and think are so important. Novelist and poet Jim Harrison recognized the restorative power of moving water, writing “You can’t be unhappy in the middle of a big beautiful river“.
Other visionaries and artists throughout the ages have also sung the praises of rivers.
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.
A.A. Milne, Author of Winnie the Pooh
The river knows the way to the sea: Without a pilot it runs and falls, blessing all lands with its charity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that only the present exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.
Herman Hesse, excerpt from Siddhartha
Each Spring when I come to revisit my favorite rivers, I return to my youth, smitten again by the beauty of the landscape and overwhelmed with remembrances of the happy memories experienced in years past. It is like the sentiment expressed in the Van Morrison song lyric: “Every time I see a river, feels like I’m back in love again“
Like people, the character of a river changes continually and each year I marvel how time and circumstances have changed these lifelong friends – and how they have changed me as well. The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus was right when he observed that “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man“.
A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It’s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it relentlessly erodes its way through the land.
Maybe I am fascinated by rivers because they are a good metaphor for life and people in the following ways:
The life-giving waters of a river emanate from the same source and they travel towards the same end. Our life too is sparked by a Creator, to which we will return at the end of our journey.
The waters of a river flow continually, but the water is always different – constantly being renewed. We too must undertake productive pursuits with our life energy to avoid unhealthy stagnation.
Rivers have segments that can be easily characterized; slow and straight, fast raging rapids, tranquil meandering with little visible movement, gurgling multi-speed currents. People, likewise experience many different segments in their day to day living. Sometimes we walk steadily straight ahead confident in our path, sometimes our life accelerates furiously as we try to hang on, sometimes the way forward sparkles in the clear brilliant sunshine, other times the path forward is shrouded by fog and unexpected turns.
As our river of life continues on to its final destination, I offer up this river prayer for a smooth journey and a safe return to our place of origin:
Heavenly Father… Do not allow our troubles to overflow and overwhelm our life. When our life is overflowing give us the capacity to widen, deepen and expand. When there is time of drought, do not allow us to stagnate and become like an arid riverbed. Give us the courage to overcome people who would try to dam our spirits or channel us so that we only flow where they want. Bless our path so that we flow freely through life following a course that leads us back to you… Amen.
Time is a familiar but mysterious concept. We think about and use it every day, yet it is difficult to describe what it actually is. Saint Augustine puzzled about time when he wrote, “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I know not.”
Poets and philosophers throughout the ages have eloquently tried to capture how their senses perceive Time by using phrases such as; “Time is fleeting“, “Time waits for no man“, “Time heals all wounds” and “Time stands still“. None of these phrases, however, succeed in advancing a deeper understanding of the mystery that is Time.
My background in engineering led me to wonder about the concept of Time beyond the typical artistic and philosophical musings – to explore what science actually had to say about the mysterious subject. So, with curiosity and time on my hands, my search led me to an online course called the Physics of Time. In this month’s blog I will share some of the interesting insights I learned about Time from that course.
Time can be examined from two separate scientific perspectives. The first is a biological perspective which deals with internal human body clocks and how the brain processes and perceives time. The second is an external cosmological perspective which has to do with the origin and evolution of time in the known universe.
Human bodies and brains have a natural way to recognize the passing of time because we have predictable biological clocks – like breathing and the beating of our hearts – that exist within each of us .
With a heart rate of about 60 beats per minute and a lifespan of roughly 70 years, the human heart will beat approximately 2 billion times. Chickens have a much faster heart rate of about 275 beats per minute, and live only 15 years – but their hearts, in the end, will also have 2 billion lifetime heartbeats.
Science has observed that the hearts of most animals will beat somewhere between 1-2 billion times but there is an inverse relationship between heart rate and lifespan. In general, the faster the heart rate, the shorter the life span. I wonder if those animals who live fast and die young perceive time any differently than us longer life-span creatures.
Besides the heart and the breath, Neuroscientists have identified three kinds of timekeeping devices inside our brains. One part of the brain keeps track of what time of day it is, another part keeps track of how much time has passed while doing certain tasks and still other parts of the brain serve as alarm clocks for events set to happen in the future.
Different neuron pulses working together in the brain help us to perceive the passage of time. These pulses can be affected by stimulants, such as caffeine, and depressants, such as alcohol which interfere with neurotransmitters in ways that make our internal clocks speed up or slow down.
We experience other biological processes that don’t repeat themselves but still contribute to our awareness of time passing: We age; we think; we make choices; we plan for the future; we remember the past. All these different aspects of time are crucial to what it means to live our lives and be human beings. Perhaps the most important aspect of our awareness of the passage of time is the accumulation of experiences.
People have observed that when they are focused on a task, they don’t pay as much attention to the outside world or to their internal clock. This causes their internal timekeeping devices to slow down while the outside world speeds up. For example, I am surprised how quickly the hours elapse while I am engrossed watching my favorite sports teams compete in a big game.
In contrast, when we are bored and not focused on any one task, the opposite effect happens. Our internal clock seems to go faster while the outside world seems to slow down. For example, when I am stuck on an airplane with nothing to do, the plane trip seems to last forever.
Scientist have reported that subjects in high-stress experiments recollect that time slowed down for them during stressful events. One theory behind this phenomenon is that the more memories we accumulate, the more time we think has passed. Our brains, when we are in a high-stress situation, does its best to record absolutely everything. It accumulates a huge amount of data, so when you think about the situation afterward, you have more memories to leaf through—and, therefore, it seems as if more time has passed.
This theory gets support from the fact that time seems to pass more quickly as we age. Summer seemed to last forever when we were children, but it seems to rush by as we get older. It may be that when we were young in the summertime, such activities as going to the beach were new to us, but as we get older we experience fewer interesting new things. Our brains don’t take in as much new information and we create fewer memories than a child would; thus, time seems to pass more quickly for us compared to when we were a child.
To understand Time from a cosmological perspective is difficult because it requires the human mind to reckon with complex physical laws of the universe that were set in place at the beginning of the universe – and to consider hard to grasp time spans that are billions of years in length.
Most physicists believe Time began approximately 13.8 billion years ago with a singular event known as the Big Bang – the so called “birth” of the universe – a point where space underwent rapid expansion and the laws of physics as we understand them came into being. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, so it is a substantial fraction of the age of the universe.
At the beginning, all matter in the universe was densely packed and its temperature was extremely high. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles and simple atoms. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity into matter, eventually forming early stars, galaxies and the other astronomical structures that are observable today.
The feature of matter that is inextricably linked with time is called entropy. Entropy is a way of talking about the disorderliness of “stuff” in the universe. It is the natural tendency of things to lose order over time. For example, a whole egg is very orderly, but if we break the egg, it becomes disorderly; if we scramble the egg, it becomes even more disorderly. A scientist would say that the egg moves from a low entropy state to a high entropy state.
In the long run, nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Entropy is the only quantity in the physical sciences that seems to imply a particular direction of progress, sometimes called an arrow of time. As time progresses, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases over significant periods of time. Entropy measurement can be thought of as a clock and things only happen in one direction of time – not the other. The past is always defined to be the direction in which entropy was lower.
The pull of entropy on matter is relentless. Everything decays. Disorder always increases. The increasing entropy of our universe over time underlies all the ways in which the past is different from the future.
It is the reason why you can disperse the scent of perfume from a bottle into a room, but cannot put the scent back into the bottle; the reason why you can mix cream into your coffee, but cannot un-mix it; the reason why cars eventually break down; the reason you remember the past and not the future; the reason you are born young and grow older; the reason you can make a choice about what to have for dinner tomorrow, but not about what to have for dinner yesterday.
When energy is in a low-entropy form, it can do useful work. When energy is converted into a high-entropy form, it becomes useless. We have fossil fuels sitting in the ground with energy in them in a concentrated form. We can extract the energy to do useful work because the entropy of the fuel is low. Once the fuel is burned it is converted to its high entropy form and it can no longer perform useful work. You can heat a room in your house by burning coal, but you cannot cool off a room in your house by unburning fuel and turning it into coal.
The common thread in these examples is irreversibility: Something happens in one direction, and it is easy to make it happen, but it does not happen in the other direction, or if it does, it is because we put effort into it. It does not spontaneously happen. Things go in one direction of time. They do not go back all by themselves.
It’s not time itself that treats the past, present, and future differently; it’s the arrow of time, which is ultimately dependent on all the “stuff” we have in the universe. It is the arrow of time that gives us the impression that time passes, that we progress through different moments. It’s not that the past is more real than the future; it’s that we know more about the past. We have different access to it than we have to the future.
Stephen Hawking combined the biological and cosmological elements of time into three distinct “arrow of time” components. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time—the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Second, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes—the direction of time in which we remember the past, but not the future. Third, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.
At the moment of the Big Bang our universe was in a condition of very low entropy and very high organization. That’s what got time started in the way we experience it in our everyday lives. Ever since the Big Bang, we’ve been living out the process by which the universe increases in entropy. That’s the influential event in the aftermath of which all humans live.
At this point in time the universe is in a condition of medium entropy. It is today that we have galaxies and stars and planets and life on those planets. Complexity depends on entropy; it relies on the fact that entropy is increasing. We don’t have to worry about how complexity can arise in a universe that is evolving. The simple fact that entropy is increasing is what makes life possible.
Scientists have confirmed that the universe continues to expand. Distant galaxies are moving away from us, and the farther away they are, the faster they are receding. The amount of space between us and the other galaxies is increasing.
The second law of thermodynamics predicts that the total entropy of the universe will continue to increase until it reaches equilibrium. The universe will calm down and become colder and colder. Everything will scatter to the winds, evolution will stop and we will have empty space once again. It is speculated by some that after a googol (1 x 10 to the 100th power) years from now, our universe will be empty space and that empty space will last forever.
There are some however who believe instead that multiple universes exist. According to this idea, the Big Bang was an event that is quite small in the history of a much larger multiverse. We see only a finite bit of the universe; perhaps farther away than what we can see, the universe looks very different. The fact that our own universe is inflating gives some credibility to this idea.
Those who talk about the possibility of a multiverse are simply observing that there is a barrier in our universe’s past beyond which we cannot see. Is there a finite amount of stuff out there? Is there an infinite amount of stuff that works exactly like the stuff we can see? Or is there an infinite amount of stuff and conditions that are very different from place to place? Until scientists can answer these questions, they can only speculate.
Regardless of which theory you believe about how the universe will ultimately evolve, we can say that all scientists agree that the universe is a complicated system, embedded in an environment that is far from equilibrium and that there is something called entropy that characterizes the organization or disorganization of us and our environment and results in the evolution of matter.
No discussion of Time would be complete without mentioning one of the most important contributions ever made to science – Albert Einstein’s 1905 publishing of the Theory of Special Relativity. Before Einstein, physicists thought of time as simple and absolute, a steady linear flow separate from the three dimensions of space.
Einstein showed that time is not simple and absolute but is actually influenced by speed and gravity. He stated that there is a link between motion in space and the passage of time. Space and time are fused together in what Einstein called 4 dimensional space-time.
Einstein theorized that Time runs more slowly for an object if it is in motion. Scientists proved this by synchronizing two atomic clocks and placing one clock in a stationary location and the other clock on a plane that was flown around the world. Upon landing, the clocks were no longer synchronized, the one that had been on the plane was milliseconds behind the one that was stationary – indicating less time had elapsed for the moving clock.
With Einstein’s relativity discovery, there is no such thing as one moment of time throughout the universe that everyone agrees on. Space and time are not absolute; they are relative – which means what we call time can be different for different observers.
How much time passes for an object depends on how you move through the universe. The network of satellites in space that carry precision atomic clocks for the global positioning system must be constantly compensated because they “lose” seven microseconds per day compared to ground clocks that are operating in a “slower time stream”.
The faster something moves, the “slower” it ages. Physicists call this effect time dilation. Theoretically, under its influence, a space voyager could return to Earth after a 20-year voyage to find himself hundreds of years in the future. To carry time dilation to its absolute extreme—as we approach travel at the speed of light, it is possible that time stops and immortality begins.
Space-time, Einstein’s four-dimensional reality of our universe, is a collection of an infinite number of events, just as space is a collection of an infinite number of points indexed by the three dimensions of space. Just as we think of all space as being “out there”, Einstein said we should think of all time as also being out there: “The difference between Past, Present, and Future is only an illusion, however persistent“.
I must admit that my deep dive into the science of time raised as many questions as it answered – but that doesn’t mean my study was a waste of my time. On the contrary, I gained some wisdom about life and walk away with a list of important things to remember that will help me make the most of whatever time I have left.
Remember that we are very, very small – Mankind is like a grain of sand in the vast Sahara Desert, occupying an infinitesimally small place in the universe. The astronomer Carl Sagan said that earth is nothing more than “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and our time amounts to nothing more than a blip“. Compared to the enormity of the cosmos and the eternity of time, it is wise for us to keep an attitude of humility, remembering the short duration of our life and the insignificance of our daily struggles.
Be grateful we are alive – In a world full of matter, humans have been fortunate to form over time into a remarkable collection of atoms that are alive, conscious and capable of love and memory. As far as we know, we are the most advanced form of life in the wide universe. In his book Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut expresses wonder and gratitude for the gift it was to have become what he called some of the “sitting up” kind of mud in the universe.
“God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!” “See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.” And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait… Amen
Kurt Vonnegut “Cat’s Cradle”
Embrace change – Entropy is a natural law, we can’t repeal it or wish it away. Entropy is what helps us to evolve and it is what makes life complex and interesting. So, rather than fight change – which is inevitable – it is healthier for us to embrace the change in our life and determine how we can best use it to evolve in ways that make us better.
Be Mindful of the Present – Sometimes it can be impossible to focus entirely on the present because it comes with an echo of the past and a foretaste of the future. Our minds typically refuse to stay in the present, constantly regretting a past that can never be undone or anxiously awaiting a future that may never arrive. The mind can be trained with Mindful Meditation techniques that teach us how to live “outside of time”, focusing our attention on each passing moment, slowing our perception of time and relieving us of our anxiety over past and future events.
Get busy and try something new – Time moves more slowly for a body in motion and we perceive the passage of time as moving slower during those moments when we are creating new memories. That tells me if I want to make the most out of time I should be pursuing activities that keep me moving and learning new things.
Don’t rule out the Divine – There is agreement among scientists that the universe started in a dense state of very low entropy and that it is expanding over time towards higher entropy. The questions that still puzzle scientists however is what triggered the Big Bang event and why did the universe start in such an unlikely state of low entropy? As a man of science and a man of God, I am somehow comforted when all questions cannot be answered and there is room in the discussions for us to ponder the possibility of a divine hand in the origin of the universe.
May you enjoy your own personal time travel trip – here’s hoping that you live every moment and love every day before your precious time slips away.
An essay written by Susanna Schrobsdorff and published in the January 22, 2018 edition of Time Magazine tells the story of two widows who found solace with one another despite the grief and sadness they felt over the loss of their spouses.
The two widows were Lucy Kalanithi, wife of Paul Kalanithi, and John Duberstein, husband of Nina Riggs. Both Paul and Nina published memoirs in 2016 (titled When Breath Becomes Air and The Bright Hour) – about the emotions they were experiencing while struggling to cope with their terminal illnesses.
The essayist described how the ache of loss runs concurrently with gratitude in the two complementary memoirs. The author of each book expresses a thankfulness for the love they have accumulated but at the same time describe the acute pain they feel at the thought of leaving it all behind. One emotion enables the other.
Edel Rodriguez for TIME
Susanna wondered how the two widows, Lucy and John, who became acquaintances and close friends throughout the process of publishing and promoting their partner’s memoirs after they passed away – and who are now planning for a future together, must feel as they tour together reading the words written by the two people they loved so profoundly.
“Perhaps their old lives seem woven into their new life, one love spilling into the next, families merging, past and present overlapping. All of it can exist almost simultaneously. The laws of time are so easily warped.”
A lot of people attempt to make a clean start when beginning a new relationship, trying to leave old baggage behind. They worry that holding on to the past will prevent them from living fully in the present or that it will hinder them from strengthening the emotional bonds of a new relationship.
I have learned from experience that leaving your bags behind is not really an option nor should we want it to be. My perspective is informed by the parallels my life has had with the story of this surviving couple.
My first wife suffered from Breast Cancer and passed away at the age of 45 leaving me and my two young daughters to mourn her loss. By good fortune and divine grace another woman came into my life, kind and loving, with three young children who was recovering from a different and maybe more traumatic kind of loss, the painful divorce and breakup of her family.
We met at a time when we were both hurting and vulnerable but we began to heal our emotional wounds gradually by consoling one another, by being generous and understanding, and by concentrating on things our partner needed instead of focusing on our own sorrows.
Rather than trying to erase the baggage from our past – and the more than two decades of loving memories spent raising our families that went along with it – we embraced it, weaving the lessons of our past lives into our new love and using our past experiences to form a stronger bond together.
Walt Whitman recognized that we are the product of everything that came before us when he wrote “And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths“. I am the person I am because of the people that came before me. They struggled and they prospered and they transferred their life’s lessons and blessings to the next generations so that we could benefit.
They are no longer here but a part of them lives in me and in you. “Death” is merely another word for former life—or, more precisely, another word for forms of life that have now sprung into endlessly transforming other forms of life.
What a shame it would be if we failed to propagate the beauty and sadness we have experienced during our past lives into our daily life. Doing so would make us less alive. Life is richer when we share the joy that we experienced from the past and we become more grateful for our blessings when we think back to the aches of sorrow we experienced in our past life.
While talking about mourning for her mother, my daughter once said to me that “Learning how to accept endings is an essential part of living“. There is much wisdom in that sentiment I think. We must accept endings as they are inevitable – death and life are an endless process, inseparable from each other. By taking the essence of those we have lost and making it an essential component of our daily living we honor best the lives of those who have passed on.
So if you are wise, you will take the accumulated baggage from your past, weave it seamlessly into the fabric of your present life and share it with others – so that when it comes time for you to leave, you will know that you contributed to growing new life.
In the spirit of the upcoming Holiday Season, I will close with a passage written by Paul Kalanithi, the dying father, who knowing that his eight month daughter would not remember him, wrote her this touching note to read someday in the future:
“When you come to one of the many moments in your life where you must give account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that doesn’t hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied.”
May your presence too always bring joy to the world and may those you love carry it forward with them to fertilize new life.
Words to Live By... 