I am but a cork bobbing along in the time-stream
Once a year I get together with some of my schoolmates. We meet at a restaurant, have a few drinks, talk about old times and count each other’s wrinkles and grey hair. Where once we fancied ourselves as pretty OK, we now feature receding hair, double-chins, the dreaded pot around the middle, and an increasing propensity in our conversation to look backwards, rather than forwards in time. To some extent that is understandable because we were mates in school but all went separate ways and we did not socialize much after the school years. It is natural we would talk about the past and its collection of football games, weird and wonderful teachers, other kids who were personalities of the school, some of them horrors or delinquents and how they turned out? One is in jail, another is running an AFL football team, and yet another a senior police officer. And so the talk goes on, as though we have not really grown up; our bodies are those of older adults but inside we are just gossiping schoolkids.
We turned out reasonably alright. One is an architect, another a researcher and writer, one a very successful builder, one a chemist, two others in business and one a computer specialist. Along the way came families, children, marriages, divorces, and the deaths of loved ones. Overall, the litany of woes, has been mercifully smaller than the joys of life. Nonetheless, one of us is suffering from depression and has stopped coming to our get-togethers – he never recovered from the loss of his wife; another is carrying the burden of the tragic loss of his young son, in a foolish accident, while on the verge of manhood; he has only just last year returned to work after years dealing with the loss. I was pleased to note that one of us, who had gone through a messy divorce with the (now) ex-wife from hell, looked younger than the last time we met and had even lost some weight. It took me a while to work out that he had started to dye his hair. He had found a new lady-friend and therefore taken prudent measures to look better. I hope it lasts.
After our most recent get-together I started to think about how we are all historical beings. By that I mean our lives are extended in time; yesterday is part of what we are, as is the future we have left. Obvious, I hear you groan. Yet our consciousness is trapped in a present instant that seems to bob along in a time-stream like a cork. How wonderful it would be if our awareness embraced all of our being in time. A scary thought even if it is possible – do I really want to experience my childhood, adolescence, middle age and ending of life, all at the same time? What kind of mind would it be that could do this and survive? I am not what some thinkers call a ‘presentist’, i.e. someone who believes only the now is real. I actually believe the past and future exist much like the shifting present. Think of it as a tapestry telling our life-story. Yet the idea of an awareness embracing all of this extended life, all at once, scares me. Perhaps I should just accept being a floating cork and enjoy what remains inside the bottle.