The Past

The Past forms us does it not? Whether we are pulling away from our experiences, hiding from them, or embracing them – the Past is always present. Depending on your belief – but that’s not right is it? I mean either something exist or it does not, it doesn’t require belief – which leads to choices (doesn’t everything? Sigh) either time is linear (boring) or it is fluid. I choose fluid because it opens so many possibilities, and as always I leave open the door that I could be wrong.

No matter if you have lived only one lifetime (you youngster you) or many, it is the karma or the history of your existence that makes you what you are now ;or rather how you choose to react to those experiences. What choices we make, which turn in the road we choose, if we run forward into adventure or away from danger – it is our decision as to how our Past exist in our present.

I know from personal experience that you can live in the present physically and yet be living in another time, another experience. When that happens you never leave that place, all your new experiences are colored by the fact you never left. For me the experience was traumatic and life altering, for others I think it can be a moment they felt they were at their best; but it’s never the right thing to do is it? How can we move forward in time unless we have the capacity to travel the river of time freely in both directions?

Light traveling at a finite speed takes ‘some’ time to reach us, so by the time we see the event of the light, it is most likely in the past. If you stand at the mirror and shave or brush your hair you are looking at an image of yourself in the past.

The Global Positioning System (GPS), which relies on satellites to pinpoint locations for devices such as car navigation systems, can function accurately only because it takes into account the effects of special relativity. These effects are significant because the GPS satellites travel at very high speeds and they make use of high-precision timings.

A consequence of Einstein’s special theory of relativity is that both distance and time are flexible; the flexibility of both space and time are inextricably linked – therefore (ta da) spacetime. Spacetime as it happens is the underlying cause of gravity, and bada boom you have the universe in four dimensions

Just as telescopes act as time machines because of the speed of light we can only ever see things as they were in the past. As we observe events in our lives, we can only ever see them in the past. We can postulate outcomes – no, relax I’m not going off on my favourite String Theory spiel – but until we can truly conceive of time as fluid we can’t make as much use of the ‘future’ as we can the ‘past’.

Yes, you guessed it – my own past came to visit last night and I’ve been doing some time traveling of my own. I could really use the Enterprise about now to return for a closer look…

Ciao.