It’s been a while since I’ve written about time…seems like an eternity.

I love time travel stories. I think that if I had to choose between being able to just beam myself someWHERE or someWHEN instantly, I would have a really hard time deciding. I mean, you know, if I could choose a superpower.

One of the first books I ever read was A Wrinkle in Time. I think that it taught me to love thinking about time. But as my time this time has unraveled, I’ve also begun to understand some different ways to look at time. The most important thing is that time is not linear. It loops and swirls, shrinks and expands, wrinkles and folds.

I think that déjà vu might just be an accidental awareness of a time loop, where we have a lesson or an insight to glean. I know that we have lesson loops – where the situation keeps repeating until we actually learn the lesson and can resolve the loop. Maybe we get some actual do-overs along the way.

We all know how time expands and contracts: those endless summers when we were kids; the long, drawn out waiting period for the highly anticipated vacation; the actual vacation that goes by in a minute or the Saturday morning that just disappears. And have you ever been really late for something, feeling super stressed about it and decide that there’s nothing you can do and so you just relax and find out that time stretched and you were able to get there on time after all? That happens to me all the time.

And what about the fact that sometimes you can close your eyes jump back into a memory  and you are just there? You can feel the feelings, smell the smells and the texture of the air. You’re there. You’re then.

The past can be changed. Maybe it’s a touch more accurate to say that the impact of the past can change. If we look back at what happened in the past, and apply the wisdom of what we now know, we can completely change our experience of the past and how it affects us today. This is especially useful when we want to free ourselves from the warps and wounds that have shaped our reactions today.

I also believe that it is possible to travel back in time and make changes to the timeline. I know, this sounds like a science fiction plot. I don’t think that it’s possible for you and me, but someone has that capability. I know, because I have a very real memory of something that happened in one timeline, but it didn’t in the one that I’m in now.  And yes, I know that you’re gonna think that I’m either hallucinating or a complete wackjob, but there it is.

Not to mention how the past, present and future are all tangled up and influence each other constantly.

I have one of those brains that totally gets quantum physics in the moment that it is being explained, and then it fades and I forget how to understand it. So in the in between times, I just remind myself that time is relative, it’s related to gravity, there’s still so much more to learn about it, who knows what we’ll discover, and, and, and!

All this leads to the idea that maybe it is our experience of time that isn’t linear. Maybe there is an objective linear thing called time that’s just sitting out there (I don’t think so!) But does it really even matter? Isn’t it all about our experience of time anyway? And most importantly, what we do with it?

In the meantime, remember these things: You are loved. We are all loved. Let’s all be kind. And in all things – progress, not perfection!

Maggie