Time and Space

There is a remarkable difference between space and time. With space, I can drop something and go back and find it. I can both touch and smell it with the realization that it hasn't gone anywhere. If I drop something in time, I can not go back and retrieve it. Its like tossing a bottle into a raging river that carries it away for good. Time acts like that raging river. I have made mistakes in life -- very large ones. Those mistakes get carried away by those raging rivers and make it impossible for me to retrieve them and change them.

Why do so many people appreciate and love old things -- stuff like old houses, old walls, old buildings, old pictures, etc.? Quite simply, those things bridge the gap back into our past. While our grandparents and then parents will eventually die, the houses we grew up in and the buildings in our old neighborhood usually remain a little while longer. Nothing can replace people or relationships, though. If we make the mistake of letting someone significant in our lives slip into our past, we have to live with that painful lesson throughout our entire lives. There will inevitably be moments where one will ask, "Could it have worked out if I had turned right instead of left (metaphorically)? Should I have done this instead of that?"

We make decisions in our lives based on the person we are at that moment, but we constantly grow as a person from making a series of mistakes. It is, in all respects, the ultimate catch 22 -- for if we could go back in time and not make those same mistakes, we could continue with whatever relationship we let go to past *BUT* the fact that we DID make those mistakes allowed us to grow as a person and perhaps see in more detail the ignorance of our past indiscretions. In short, we would be judging the past from a frame of mind that was created by making such mistakes to begin with.

The reason hindsight is ultimately 20/20 is due to the fact that, without the benefit of making mistakes, we would be virtually blind since our birth. How both ironic and painful it is that we must grow in this way -- this is without a doubt one of life's most difficult lessons.

However, there is an interesting mind experiment worth trying. Let's say you are in your 20's or 30's. You still have over half of your life left to live. I want you to imagine yourself as an 80 year old man or woman laying in bed approaching death. Imagine looking back at your life and wishing you could go back to change something you did perhaps a year from now. Now, suddenly you find yourself here again and reading this blog.

It looks as though your wish has been fulfilled! That said, are you going to continue to make the same mistakes you have been making? Are you going to diddle-daddy your life away? You were so close to death and yet you REALLY wanted this second chance and now you have it! After that little mind experiment, do you feel just a little more energetic about life and paying more attention to your actions and how they affect people?

Imagine this before you go:

The things you do today affect the future of humanity in ways you cannot understand, even well after your death. The love you give and the experiences you share with others form a type of temporal echo that spread throughout the future like ripples in a great pond. Do you want to take the opportunity that you have been given to drop a pebble into the pond or do you want to let loose and do a cannonball run into it?

The choice is yours -- it's only life, right?