It’s about Time

Introduction

Time is a fascinating and an unavoidable subject for the mind that stretches its imagination to challenge its capacities and explore its wants and limitations to metaphorically graze on some of its possible greener grasses.

I, myself, am quite partial to science-fiction, have great hopes for the progress in science but wish that we acknowledged more and better understand time-related human power as it ‘currently’ stands.

Human Power over time

We trickle up and down memory lanes, searching to relive a life, re-experience a moment, borrow a psychologically affecting instant, understand a meaning, grieve a feeling, or just to confirm that immense human power and sigh in relief to our own humanity even sanity! Remember the madeleine of Proust and her power to take him back in time in his book In Search Of Lost Time (A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu)?

The limits of our power

Yet so much is lost in the corridors of time, testimony of our wobbly minds or our biased hearts. We come back from those trips with sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less than we bargained for, inevitably doing some collateral damage in our focused search, like a 21st century Hollywood hero ravaging a whole stack of hay to find that most important needle. Memories are distorted (enhanced ot romanticised, worsened) and shuffled around like cards in the search for that one piece that will bring peace to that our quest, albeit for a moment, like would a drug…

Science fiction

There is not an element of science fiction that has escaped directly or indirectly the exploration of time, starting from our human capacities and the evolutionary potential it truly possesses if we went on to fully harness that power, provided , as so go the theories, that there’s more to harness within each stage of natural ‘mutation’. Many a time, science fiction has offered one or the other resulting time-related powers at any of the infinite stages of all the possible evolutionary scales, giving the mind a space onto which to stretch its individual powers. This (conscious or not) proclamation of a ‘real possibility ‘ can, depending on its platform, turn into, at its best a gold rush or at its worst a wish hunt. Religions, traditions, emotions, science (non fiction), no one is spared from its bite.

The potential capacities created

The possibilities multiply the capacities of imagination and mere memories to become a Tardis* for actual trips to what we once knew or even to what is to come and turn them from a burstable thinking bubble to an amazingly tangible and almost incredibly maddening reality.

I personally think that there is a major part to be played by a field often left out when it comes to this subject. Having all these capacities is exciting to anticipate but completely pointless if there’s not a parallel education about its moral use. One of the important aspects of time is the opportunity to remember the many people we have personally been, throughout it. This allows us to truly measure our progress (realise how far we have come), be able to connect and deal with ourselves in relationship with the remains of our past and understand others when they are where we have once been (since we all have our own pace in the human race).

Time out

Although every part of the world (human and place) holds by definition a mark of time, most probably mother Africa more than all, maybe my settling in England, host of arguably some of the most significant modern time landmarks, each in their own rightful uniqueness, is my way of harnessing some and absorbing more of those powers. In my dreams, I am lying in the Tardis by Dr Who who I struggled not to represent as David Tennant ;) while Big Ben’s voice echoes in the immense space reminding us to adjust our clocks and watches, no offense to Greenwich, to our hearts. Until I write the song inspired from Time, it’s Time-out.