Time may not be as we think, but our perceptions of it depend upon our human lives. Whatever the nature of time is in eternity, our perceptions are of the increments we live.
2
excellent
3
My wife lives in Hiroshima Japan. We are awaiting her citizenship when she will move to New York. My day is flipped in reverse. Her day has already happened and as she prepares to sleep we Facetime as I drink my morning coffee. If she has a bad day I have an opportunity to right it, do something that will be good news for us. When I am in Japan I never miss a birthday here in the states. We have learned so much over the five years of our relationship, from the first time we met, the countless trips we have taken to see each other all over the world, the two hours we sit and talk face to face on our computers, our wedding on the shores of Eta-jima. There is nothing linear about time, there is nothing linear about love, though we fall into the old habit of giving time all the power over us. We have challenged both and are winning.
8
I'm an East Coast person and for some odd reason decided to move to Hawaii after retirement having vacationed there many times with my deceased husband.
The feeling that Lauren writes of was so startling and disturbing to me because everything and everyone I was connected to was in a different time zone - 5 or 6 hours ahead.
New friends told me it was just jet lag - give it a month or so, they said. But my biorhythms never adjusted.
Modern communications and technology lulls us into thinking we're "together" when our minds, eyes, ears and hearts are, but our bodies are not.
After six months, I moved back to the East Coast. What a relief. I can relax again.
10
Such a lovely little essay to read here in the early morning in Peru where I am traveling, as I often do, in one place or another, to escape the sameness of life in just one place. Perhaps I am escaping time also a bit by avoiding the endlessly repeating days with their same visuals, their same aromas, their same rhythms and feelings.
12
Greetings from a Californian in Norway.
In my own understanding, I find it silly to fear the passing of time. Instead I'll be much more concerned with how I choose to spend it immediately. There's no way of knowing how much of it lies ahead of any of us, and I imagine that our personal timelines are volatile. There are probably infinite possible scenarios everyday that could technically kill me. Yet none have happened for now, thankfully. Instead of being afraid for us, I find comfort in making sure that my family and my friends, 9 hours behind me and 8,200 kilometers away, know how loved they are by me when I'm away. And when I am home again, we will pass time together. In that way, the passing of time is a gift, bringing new memories.
12
my late wife and I spent time in japan and in the eastern time zone of north America.
we'd often be in our native countries individually at the same time. she was 13 or 14 hours ahead of me when we weren't together.
i'd tell her to look out the window early morning for her and evening for me--and we could look at the sun at the same time.
I never got used to being at opposite ends of the day.
36
I'm surprised the author doesn't mention "An Experiment with Time" by J.W. Dunne. This book, first published in 1927, was widely read and discussed during my college years in the 1960s. Dunne's arguments about precognition and serialism would be more fodder for her musings. I think Jung also had some related ideas. Personally, I'm not sure any of this does much to advance knowledge of the universe or our place in it. But it does stimulate conversations around the lava lamp. And it gives editors something timely to publish as our clocks fall back.
9
I understand these feelings very well, traveling over 200K miles a year, away from my family. FaceTime is a poor substitute, although I am very thankful for it. At this moment, I am again in Indonesia (was here just 7 weeks ago), dealing with jet lag from a perfect 12-hour day-for-night. It was much harder when our daughter was young; she is now in university in a different city. But now it is hard in a different way because the illusion is fading from the realities of advancing age. Hang on to the illusion as long as you can, Lauren—it will demand ever greater tenacity as the years go by.
41
Thank you, Lauren DePino. Wonderfully well written.
I was born in South Asia, but a New Yorker for over 4 decades. I still have relatives there, though the number is dwindling down. They are 9.5 hours ahead, 10.5 hours after we fall back an hour in New York tonight.
We reach out and touch one another, often via the Internet, emails, texts, phone calls and such.
Sometimes, the phone calls that come at night, New York time, are the ones I dread the most. It is often not good news.
I got one in January 2005 when my father, a New Yorker for decades who retired and went back, passed away. Another one in October 20, 2014, when my mother passed, already October 21st where she was. She passed away at night, as did her father, but eerily on October 20th in the afternoon, there was a voicemail from my wife's cousin, who was visiting her children in California. She has the same name as my mother and in the voicemail she only said her name. Nothing else. It was just about the time my mother passed away. I relayed this to my sister. She said, "You know you were the youngest and mother's pet. She was saying goodbye to you."
As you do, Lauren, "I’ll continue to hope and imagine we will always have one another, no matter how delusional and tenacious it may seem."
38
@RK
I'm sorry for your losses and for the distance you constantly experience.
I don't comment often, but there was something human and universal to what you describe. Sometimes I think that love is thicker than time and space.
18
I will read Lightman's book, and thanks for this piece. It's the story of my [recent] life as a global network engineer. Three months of every year in the air, going somewhere in a 747; which now seems more familiar than my home. Over half a year every year in another hemisphere
My wife takes many forms: a voice on the phone, an image on facetime, on too few occasions a physical presence I can actually touch, and smell, and sleep with. How odd, in my world, to say something to someone, and they are actually there to hear. No logistics of communication.
As I fall sleep at night I say good morning, good afternoon, and other greetings to all I have known and worked with over these decades. Human interactions that span time and global distances.
One can orbit over the planet many times a day in the International Space Station. I did this 8k miles at a time. The terrain is not a view out the window (spaceport) it's full of people with 1,000's of life stories that you now know. That you recall and think about.
59
@OSS Architect
Those who work globally, they always think in "hours ahead" .. London five hours, Beijing and Asia 12 hours.
Often advised -- just think, in your own time zone. Otherwise, you'll just be confused.
4
@Bang Ding Ow
Easy to say, hard to do.
1
@Mimi
We bought a 5 zone clock/map a few years ago. I like knowing without much thought what time it is in places where people I love live
2
Wonderful musings. Einstein, and Einstein's dreams. Past, present, and future. Or as the Moody Blues put it, days of future passed.
But since the international date line is completely arbitrary, perhaps the author is 12 hours behind her family, not ahead. Ponder that.
It gets really strange when it's 23 hours, are they really almost a full day ahead, or "merely" one hour behind? Admittedly tenacious, must be a long German word for that phrase.
4
For a time, we lived in Maui. By the time we got up in the morning, pretty much everything that was going to happen in the world had happened. During the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections -- which we thought at the time were emotionally fraught -- we felt somehow protected from the news because it had already happened.
For the 2012 election we lived in Paris. When we got up, the news had not yet happened, and while we were busy all day, we waited patiently for evening when at least something would have been reported, and bedtime, when we would at least have an idea of how the day was going to go. By the next morning the day before had been reported and examined; we could go about another day protected from political developments at home.
This year we are on the west coast. Our days and nights are bursting with anxiety as we are part of the news day and the news day has stretched into 24 hours. I'm not sure how we will survive, especially since the president's campaign activity for his next election started pretty much on his inauguration day.
We're already making plans to be at least 6 hours out of sync for 2020.
7
Lauren DePino, reading your reflections on time, life, and death and then reading all 35 comments (saved to a Word file), was a much better way to begin my day here in Sweden than reading World and USA articles.
What interests me most at this moment is the sub-headline I see to the left of this comment box:
"For now, I live 12 hours in the future, where nothing can harm the ones I love."
Before going further, I re-read your opening paragraphs to be sure I understood what led you to engage in these reflections and I learn at least these two reasons:
"Einstein's Dreams" inspired to imagine your own thought experiments.
You are terrified of losing the people you love, and you always carry this anxiety with you.
At this point I leave the sphere of thought experiments and report directly from my Swedish newspaper, DN, about a commonplace reality that luckily does not lead me to live in constant fear.
Yesterday 13:00 h CET a large truck broke through the wire center barrier on RV 40 east of Gothenburg to meet head on a car, killing two in the front seats, while their 10 year old child in the back survived.
About every two weeks I pass this locale while sitting belted in the upper deck of Bus4You. I know that such an accident can occur, even in Sweden with the lowest highway fatality rate in the world.
You and I know one truth even though I do not share your anxiety: Give your loved ones your best you - now.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
@Larry Lundgren - Two replies to my own comment, first the more important of the two:
1) I have been drafting an essay for my family on my Theory of Love - It Is All A Matter of Time, a theory in which I, 86 years old, even make use of Olive's You're Not Alone. That is why I end my comment by writing (implicitly) every time you say goodbye, show your love, be your best.
2) I mention being belted in Bus4You because in the US in June I had a horrifying bus ride in a Greyhound bus that clearly should not have been on the roads, roads not so good either. That bus had no seat belts so if we had rolled over to starboard the the person next to me already filling the space so I was compressed against the window would have landed on me with not good results. On Bus4You all drivers have to first remind me that it is Swedish and Danish law to be belted in on intercity buses, and then many drivers go down the aisles, both down below and in the upper deck and see to it that each of us is belted. You can probably guess what else I might want to write about American bus service.
I met a beloved friend in a scuba diving class, where at first sight we each knew we had found a partner worthy of trust. We made many dives together over the decades, breathing in bottled air as we explored the depths of lakes and bays, and the layers of seas.
Most frequently, though, we sat across from each other at his kitchen table, drinking coffee, talking, talking --and often passionately arguing, our favorite intellectual sport-- about anything at all.
My friend was one of the few genuine atheists I've known. Because he believed his time here was all he had or would ever have, he treasured time above all else.
What if you're wrong, I'd ask, and there IS life after death, which would mean time is endless, and not to be either feared or horded? He always responded with the same sardonic promise: that if he died first, he would send me a signal from the beyond if he was wrong.
He did die first, abruptly, with no warning at all, at the wildly too soon age of 54. Several days after he died, I felt his familiar, comforting presence as I slept. I saw him as I so often had, sitting across from me, though his face was in darkness and he said nothing. I asked him- so, were you wrong? Are you a dream or are you really here? He said nothing, but now his silence spoke.
I'll never forget the sudden and profound awareness I had that my question was absurd, nor the intense relief I felt as I laughed and laughed in my sleep, before drifting back into forgetfulness.
10
Comforting
Until I think of the cancers that took my sister, mother, father, uncles , aunts, friends....
Plus knowing my only sister left has stage 3 cancer
And me........ stage 2 heart failure. From a broken heart cultivated in hospital wards since I entered the healthcare system as a 16 year old nurses aid .
My first patient, emaciated and dying from cancer.
That is when .... walking the halls of a nursing home .... I became aware of time..... we each own our time....
Now I am a retired Nurse.....
Obsessed with time.......
It isn’t good living in time.
Sometimes I think about” last times”
Last time I hugged my sister and my mom
Last time I was able to carry my babies
Where are my babies , my 6 year old has been replaced twice with a 31 year old and 26 year old.
Where did my 30 year old self go? Now that I am 66?
Every day I meditate on death instead of on life.
Complicated philosophical thought exercise.
Is time the cosmos punishment?
We exist on a round rock which is finite.
If we were more aware ,like 20% of us ;would we have permitted all the horrors of existence. ?
I will read the books you mention.
I realized I was finite at age 4.... listening to adults discuss passings of loved ones.
I asked” am I gonna die too?
Gramma said “not for a long time”
“ where will I go!?”
“To heaven with god”
“What will I do!?”
“Sew Angel wings”
“Forever”!?
Yuch!i don’t wanna ,
None of us do, we all use avoidance behavior.
The hardest day was when my little children asked the ??????
5
I really don’t believe in time we are all stardust. Our loved ones are just on the other side of dimensional veil we can’t perceive.
3
Henri Bergson versus Albert Einstein on Time
http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher-helped-ensure-there-was-no-nobel-for-relativity
1
So glad you feel safe in Malaysia.
I could never feel safe there. You see, I'm Jewish, and Malaysia is the country whose Prime Minister once proclaimed that Jews run the world.
But then again, it's not too safe to be Jewish anywhere these days.
2
Fine writing. And shows that "Ekam Sath, vipraha bahudha vadanthi"- The truth is one, the wise say it in many ways. Ancient Greek or Hindu philosophers, medieval mystics, modern physicists or freelance writers pondering things great and small and looking for ways to deal with anxiety - all arrive at the truth - the Time, a veil, an illusion.
2
Because the Malay population is about one-tenth that of the US, absolute numbers aren't helpful.
Normalized crime rates in Malaysia are generally much lower than here in the US. These statistics become closer together when only urban populations are considered, but Malaysia is still lower overall.
Yet every year, they execute almost exactly the same number of people in Maylasia as are executed in the US.
Maybe that has something to do with it...
That book is overrated. More like a dreamscape outline
Beautiful essay. I would also recommend Ted Chiang's "The Story of Your Life" which questions how will you act today when it's inevitable that harm will in the future come to those you love.
2
Thank you. This is an absolutely beautiful meditation, and important on a myriad of levels. I was thrilled at your mention of "Einstein's Dreams," as it's one of my faves, as well.
Embedded in the quick wit of your mother's non-linear time reflection is a cosmic axiom that the human mind is in no position to even touch. Even Einstein could acquaint himself with it only through human-contrived mathematics. And that axiom is, there is no such thing as time. Human consciousness has evolved in a random cosmic nanosecond in the explosion we call the Big Bang to be aware of the physical explosion (universe), minus the comprehension that it's already gone. It's already happened.
What we view as "time," a paltry local measurement based on movement within our solar system, is nothing more than a means to make sense of intellectual/biological cycles, human relationships obviously being one of those.
But, reality dictates that it is always just NOW. Now won't be the past in 5 min, nor does it need to wait to exist a year from now, because it always just is, with or without the human illusions of past and future. No conditions, no regrets, no rewards.
Just like the life cycle....just like love...
6
Time is change. We don't sit still, we cannot undo the changes already taken place.
Our cells run down and are replaced right up until they are not. Time is the recognition that things change inevitably and we cannot stop it, whether it is the rotation of the earth or the inevitability of the revolution around the sun, or the fact that our kids are no longer infants, but lighting out on their own.
If we count our time only as loss - the possibility of future loss - we lose the moment we live in. Everyone of us, at some point in our lives, has wished fervently that this moment could be an hour ago, a day ago, before a terrible loss, when what is real had not yet happened.
I don't think about time much at all, because tied up in the concept of human time is the concept of human regret. Maybe later I will, but right now I don't have time for that.
5
@Cathy...perfect.
Its amazing, it is such a talent in very young age.
3
I am pondering a phrase from a post-Gaol letter by Oscar Wilde in which he writes that "the sunlight is half one's income". There is a whole philosophy in that.
6
Yes, "...love feels eternal...". Thanks for the inspiration to find Lightman's "Einstein's Dreams".
3
I guess the mental gymnastics necessary to enjoy this piece is to believe that the artifice of time zones and the International
Date Line somewhere in the Pacific Ocean really do separate one day from the other, yesterday from today. It's an amusing distortion of reality, like looking at yourself in those wiggly fun house mirrors.
As I distract myself with reading, while anxiously awaiting Tuesday's midterms, I wonder what time it was in Russia when Trump was pronounced winner in 2016. Europe is a day ahead of us; they would have had plenty of time to manipulate the election as they saw fit. Oh, but our intelligence service has already documented the role of the Russian trolls. OK, so it was the trolls who knew how to hack into our tomorrow's time zone. That's how they did it then, and probably now as I write.
In Anthropology, I read of a indigenous people who lived entirely in such a dense forest that they had never seen a horizon. Eventually, they were discovered by the outside world and then had occasion to venture beyond their forest. Seeing an open plain and some elephants on the horizon, the forest dwellers were amazed to see miniature elephants.
Well, time is the fourth dimension and we, like the forest dwellers,
can barely comprehend what that dimension is.
9
The English language is so weak, until we read the words of writers like Lauren DePino. People often ask how old I am, particularly from those cultures not my own. Now I have an answer, the words of her mother.
We say the "sun rises", an observation from the surface of the earth which rotates rapidly but whose motion we cannot feel but only see in relation to the changing position of the sun throughout daylight hours. Sadly, in cities, we do not detect the same relationship to the Milky Way anymore.
In Chinese there is no word for gender. The word is "ta", gender and animation determined by context. In English we are stuck, inventing clumsy variations of personal pronouns to avoid bias.
On a more practical scale it takes writing like Lauren Depino's and Alan Lightman's to understand that clock time (eat because it is noon) can be a rather ridiculous invention, it's most silly application being daylight savings time. How is it that people can actually say that DST makes the day "longer"?
Please, more writing by DePino in the NYT.
5
I spend much of the year in Asia. What I find amazing is that all those people in New York are upside down.
5
Guns work everywhere and at any time regardless of being in the future or the past or whatever. Dream on. Any civilized nation has outlawed them and it's definitely not true that when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns... And no, I'm not afraid of the Army or the police. But perhaps I should be.
I read this article yesterday but came back to it today because of the art work. I googled Jon Han but can't find this particular picture anywhere. How can I get a print of this? I LOVE this picture!!!!
3
Up too early from silly and needless time change to Daylight Saving Time in the southeastern US, reading your piece was a deeply moving and soul-nourishing way to greet what may be a sea change in America's life on Tuesday. Thank you for your wonderful words, Ms. DePino.
Understanding so well that feeling of the sun touching the people you love 12 hours later! My children and grandchildren are choosing to live for now in New York, India and Australia. And yes, though we know that for Sapiens the cosmos is finite (not infinite, and we are not promised tomorrow or even one instant more than our allotted life span on earth), there is a kind of "safe space far from home" -- that 12 hour time-difference -- where nothing can harm the people we love!
6
I live in Italy, which puts my daughter in New York 6 hours behind me. My wife and I have Skype dinners together with her in Milan while she’s having lunch in New York.
I can say it’s strange to eat dinner while she’s eating lunch.
Way better than nothing, but sad not to be able to pass the salt.
She seems distant and a little out to lunch.
Is she there and where is there and is it fair?
Time is a crime.
I’m glad she’s coming home for Xmas.
A hug is worth a thousand time zones.
7
I am looking at the clock on my phone
Berkeley, CA, my husband, the dog, the cat
Boston, MA, my daughter, first year of college
Firenze, Italia, me, my 96 year old mother with still a spark of joy, once a day, another dog, another cat
Kathmandu, Nepal, my sister, trekking, finally, after a life of care-taking
Taipei, Taiwan, the office, because we must
i wish we could all be in one place, always, as I live missing
24
@Silvia Thank you for this.
NY, me, my partner, my dog
LA, my daughter, my only child
TX, all the rest of my family and my mother's ashes
I too wish we could all be in one place, always, and I, too, live missing.
3
So this is a beautiful piece....
I once had a professor give this exercise....recall a day when everything was flowing perfectly....only to be interrupted by a painful experience which seemingly shattered your existence.....but was surprisingly upended by a wonderful experience that brought happiness.
It took several minutes of thought, but I was able to recall several days in my then young life that qualified....
The exercise was to open our minds to the power of cognitive therapy....I've used it ever since when faced with adversity, anxiety or just as a reminder of how great life is......it works for anyone interested and btw....Philly is proud of you Lauren!
7
Wonderful essay; thank you.
As a career physicist and engineer, my own tenacious illusion has been that people will somehow be as bedazzled by the wonders of the universe and the infinitesimal probability of our own existence, and our loved ones’ coexistence, right here, right now, that all of the conflict and disappointment we get caught up in will fade away into the insignificance that it is.
I’m hanging onto my illusion.
24
@Terry Malouf
I am an ex chemist, a semi-retired attorney transitioning into a sculptor. Yet, in my mind's eye I am all three of these definitions at once. As an intellectual exercise about a year ago I and a few of my friends tried to imagine an existence without time. Did all things happen at once or did nothing happen. Would people still age in place time-wise? Would atoms cease to exist? Would black Holes still keep Galaxies together? What aspects of Newtonian physics still apply to our universe without time? Are wee all merely blind people trying to describe the elephant they touch with only one hand? Is it possible to even imagine another Universe without our 4 dimensions? How can mathematicians imagine a Universe with 11 dimensions (i.e. string theory).
I still get lost within these thoughts?
A lovely expression of your thoughts, sensations and experience. And an intriguing array of responses from those who want to fix you, set you straight and put you on their path to enlightenment. Perhaps one day some thoughtful Comments editor will delve into the disparate impulses with which we respond to the expressions of others -- the appreciation, charity, certitude, incomprehension, kinship, condemnation and, oddest of all, the periodic distance between notions of the politic and politics. Here's to those small hours when an arm falls across the back, time dissolves in homecoming and we are in the moment.
19
I loved “Einstein’s Dreams”, given to me by a lover who was a passionate artist and, ultimately, total drama king. It was doomed from the start but I grew from the experience. That detour in time helped contextualize my multidimensionality, giving me perspectives that’ve enriched my experiences since. And I still have the book.
Once we moved in together, my world narrowed as some of my usual markers of time fell away. He couldn’t stand me starting the day with NPR because it disrupted his morning “process”. So I stopped and sort of withdrew from the world. I woke up alone one morning, months after he left, and realized that some of who I was, worldly and knowledgeable and what initially drew him to me, was tossed aside to accommodate his process. And I was finally feeling curious again as to what was going on out there. So I turned on KCRW and realized the hole it had left. Time had felt suspended and with NPR it was moving forward again, like an old friend dragging me out to reconnect with the world one radio show at a time.
Now when I think of him 22 years later, I remember more the intense magic we shared in a timeless space outside of the crazy bipolarity we both brought to the relationship. Funny how time in reverse works like that. In a funky cabin in Topanga, surrounded by oak-studded hills from which the moon would rise splashing light across our naked bodies, time felt suspended. And it was for a while, until one day I turned the radio on and it began again.
29
So beautiful, and this illustration.
10
Lauren, thank you for this beautiful piece. I recently lost a loved one unexpectedly and the thought of a non-linear reality makes them feel a little closer to me tonight.
15
I live with the same type of anxiety you live with. The fear of losing a loved one is so deep and really does run my life. This piece really captures the insane thoughts that go through ones head to justify not thinking about it, like going to sleep.
8
I was born in Manhattan the year before Lindbergh made his flight to Paris so I have had a while to get the feel of time which never loses that strange undecipherable quality of the mystery of a now that travels through eternity wherein in Einstein’s revelation is a static four dimensional continuum. I spent the first of my life in old New York for thirty five years before finally settling in Helsinki wherein the most odd transformations now enchanting my old city have not yet transmuted much of what I treasured in the USA into something that I find most frightening. My time here is also twelve hours away from my native city and, at least for a while, insulates be from the encroaching chaos which is arising throughout the entire planet. At my age all my close relatives and friends back there exist only in my imagination and dreams, quite safe from this uncertain future and we still have lively discussions and share memories within the personal cosmos under my scalp.
37
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Right now my spouse is in Thailand, so this essay is particularly meaningful right now.
6
In a frightening world, a human being, with a wealth of imaginative ideas, can find many ways to cope. There was something innocent for me how the author played a calculated illusion with herself to soothe fears about loved ones far away, even though she was aware that in real time life is always beyond our control, except for the moral and ethical choices we make.
As for myself, practicing religion is what soothes me. Whether anyone believes in a Creator or not, an informed spirituality has given me the hope of being reunited with my loved ones after death. For me, heaven is beyond space and time, a Placeless place.
2
@MKathryn
An “informed spirituality” is surely an oxymoron when faith is quite irrational predicated as it is on belief. Nothing wrong with that but why kid yourself.
1
Another wrinkle in time for me was flying east from Japan on New Year's Day and arriving on the west coast in time to celebrate it a second time.
14
@Puffin
I had a similar experience. I celebrated New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong in 2006 and was tripped out by the fact that I was now the first in my group that at midnight sends celebratory texts to each other, by 15 hours!
6
Don't live in fear of what the clock says. Understand always. Time is eternal, until it's not.
11
If only mankind had a Lauren DePino previewing the future, so much misery might be avoided. For instance, imagine if she could upload a video on her Tuesday evening showing voters Tuesday morning the immediate result of another Republican victory; Donald Trump stepping up to his bully's pulpit to crow like a rooster, mocking the fake news, praising his own genius, and telling Muller to take a hike. It could turn enough stomachs over breakfast to make all the difference in turnout. Sadly none of that is within the realm of possibility (as currently understood). But here's hoping Ms DePino wasn't working so hard on her enjoyable essay she neglected to mail in her vote.
27
@Leigh, yeah, this booming economy is a real bummer, isn,t it?
1
@kennqueen
Is the economy the measure of all things? Is that what matters most to you?
2
A few years ago I took comfort in the thought that no matter how old you are, your life expectancy is some date in the future. Therefore, death is impossible.
17
Comments to this piece sound way more insightful than I feel tonight - I'm just contemplating a measly daylight savings time hour...
13
Reading through so many of these dismissive, callous, or trivialising comments, it became starkly clear to me those who, like myself, have/continue to live this literal night-and-day divide, experience something that is both incredibly profound when reflected upon and incredibly hard to understand or imagine for those that haven't done so.
Personally, it was, has been, and continues to be a feature of my day-to-day life due to my spouse's profession and my own. The distance is more than just physical, in a way it's hard to explain...the hours betwixt us entwine so much hope, fear, promise, potential, and as yet unknown disappointments, let alone the mere realities of life and death. And yet we must exist in those hours, conscious of events or not, and eventually face their reality...
This piece is the kind of intensely reflective, universal piece that is why we subscribe to the Times. Please, more of this, more of our common human experiences, and far less of the divisiveness of the political fire-of-the-day. THIS is what speaks to the common humanity in all of us. Let's embrace that.
49
"While I’m not afraid of dying, I’m terrified of losing the people I love. Eventually, death will separate them from me, and I have no idea how or when. None of us do."
Ms. DePino, everyone is afraid of dying but I am glad that you are an optimist sure that "they" will predecease you. The joy of being young. One thinks that one will live forever.
"while I’m going about my daily routine in Southeast Asia. I don’t have to worry about their getting into a car accident, because they’re under the covers sleeping. "
I hate to shake your belief in peaceful and protective sleep, but there is probably more likelihood of one of a certain age dying at night in bed in sleep than in a car accident.
If it makes you feel better and safer to believe in the superficiality of time, then good for you. But time conquers all; nobody is safe.
8
I've no problem with deceiving oneself about time - when I want to be happy I remember a time long ago when I still believed the future would be a better place place.
To each their own I guess.
14
Loved your writing. Can emphasize. Carpe Diem.
8
Read the article twice and couldn't figure it out. Anyway, all it reminded me was I have to set my clocks back one hour tonight. Hey, maybe if the author set her clocks AHEAD 12 hours she wouldn't have any of the problems she mentioned! And then she could tell us what the stock market will do tomorrow and we'll all be rich!
8
Here in the west coast, we ready our clocks to “fall back” early tomorrow morning and yet again show the capricious relationship of Man to the contextualization of time.
I wish for this author to learn that the fear of harm and death to our loved ones is just that; fear. No one can stop the inevitable. Having lost all my family by now, she too can discover that you may lose the beloved in body, but their gifts of love, joy and humor, as well as what you’ve been taught, never have to diminish.
20
Thank you so much for this! I am also somewhat obsessed with time and also with memory. An excellent book to read is “The Future of Nostalgia” by Svetlana Boym. The poet Christian Wiman also tackles the subject quite well. He has a line about being most alive when your everyday self and your eternal self are one. Mantra music by singers like Nirinjan Kaur and a band called Satigata can really help ground you in the eternal now. After a mystical experience eight years ago I was given a mantra by the Universe, “Everything is Connected, All Time is Now, We Play All the Roles.” Ram Dass and Alan Watts also have much sage advice on the present moment. And then there is T.S. Eliot... outtakes below:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened...
Time and the bell may bury the day,
the black cloud may carry the sun away.
But will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us?
After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
- T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 1935
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"I’m well aware that my theory is a strategy, that in my attempt to shirk time and prevent death from robbing me of my loved ones, I am merely deceiving myself." Ya think?!
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Sad, so much fear at such a young age.
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I can recall how awe-struck that I was the first time I heard that, if the sun somehow stopped shining, it would take eight minutes for anyone on earth to know it.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -Hamlet
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Your fiance may indeed require protection from snakes and boars, but not from leopards. The only "leopards" in Malaysia are clouded leopards that can easily be mistaken for a large kitty-kat and that keep away from people. Their population is low and in decline. If your fiance gets to sight one, it would be a rare event. You can find some videos of them on youtube.
Of much greater concern is the insect population, especially wasps. And mosquitoes carry dengue fever, which is endemic in Malaysia.
But the number one danger in Malaysia is driving. The people are lovely, but the drivers are among the world's worst.
4
Nice depiction when you make an abstraction of time's unforgiving sequence of events (and you know well our brief transit in having the gift of life), by living in the here and now, hopefully going through moments where our egos disappear as we become one with Nature, eternal while it lasts. Beautiful!
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We will always have each other, in the part of time that we call the past. It's not a great comfort but it will have to do.
I too have been filled with dread when contemplating the approaching future lately. I feel like this isn't a particularly optimistic moment in history.
46
What a poignant and beautifully written expression of what it’s like to be half-a-world’s distance from our loved ones. As an American couple (he’s a writer, she’s a photographer) also living in Malaysia, we do frequently allow our thoughts to drift 12 hours (or 13, as the time of year dictates) and divine what those we love and miss might be doing in our past, their present. Thank you so much for putting such eloquence to our feelings.
45
Ah! Malaysia. A country of the future. And always will be. At least by a few hours.
7
excellent, well written - having people who are very important to me in so many time zones I identify strongly
7
Lovely. Thank you.
16
Beautiful essay. Thank you.
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