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A brief interlude

(While we wait for the future to catch up with the past)

We hear a lot about time and space. Human existence seems defined, even trapped, by the dimensionality of those two simple concepts, and yet we hardly ever explore them. Rather, we treat them like the bars of the cage; we learn the limits and then proceed to ignore what might exist outside. Of course this isn’t true of all us: philosophers, physicists, philanthropists, even philanderers seem to continually explore outside the accepted dimensions. But even they use those dimensions as the fulcrum to leverage what they can from our accepted reality. They act, however, where the rest of us simple endure.

Time frames our actions: now, later, soon, then, when. Space provides the setting for time: here, there, where. Without time and space permeating our realities, there would be no linear, no stream-of-conscious, no consciousness at all. But every day we get up and act as if these two factors were just bit players, mere frameworks within which true meaning is portrayed. And maybe it is so, but doesn’t it behoove us to carry a sense of this reality with us always? Should not our ’situational awareness’ in life be as honed as it is in dangerous or stressful episodes within that life? If one realizes time is the factor that prevents or causes change, shouldn’t controlling, changing or eliminating time consume a large part of our planning and learning processes?

It can be observed that people, to a greater or lesser extent, all learn that space dominates their moment to moment existences: move to the left and avoid being run over, throw the dart to win the game, drive through the drive-through to abate hunger; but should not the motion, the thought, the energy, the physics be part of a larger plan? Turn right every time and you risk RSIs; turn too far and you pull the wrong muscle; fail to turn fast enough and you encounter the object hurtling toward you at an unfortunate angle. Everything happens at a subconscious level as if we feel that abrogating our responsibilities to something we don’t even understand and rarely can control is the most natural thing in the world. Thinks about it. How many times has your subconscious made a mistake?

And most importantly, in ignoring the enclosing reality, we forever give up the possibility of changing it, of controlling it, of creating an alternate reality, of setting and resetting the universe on new and wondrous paths.

Of not just waiting to see what happens next, but acting …