Time Keeps on Slipping

Do you navigate it effectively?

Slipping Time

It is very interesting that a time travel prompt arrived at this very moment in time. I am just finishing the second week of my three-week summer vacation in my hometown. Being home feels like a trip back in time, like I’ve been transported to younger years.

But, there is a duality to it. It also reveals the passing of time by highlighting how things have changed. Physically, people and places look different. Technology is progressing, even if slowly compared to more heavily populated towns and cities. My perceptions are drastically different as well, based on my experiences over the past twenty years.

Visits home, even though they are not actually time travel, are at least a trip down memory lane. I wrote about experiencing some of my old favorites, butterflies and blueberries, in this story. I can’t believe how much time has slipped by since I moved away. My perception of time is flawed. I am always surprised when I come home and find even more things have changed. I somehow expect things to stay the same regardless of time.

Perception of Time

I recently read about how feelings of awe can impact our perception of time and wrote about it in this story.

Unfortunately, and as counterproductive as it is, many of us spend more time reliving the past and worrying about the future than we do fully emersed in the present moment. I am working on this. I am in my mid-forties. It is time to get real about time and make sure I make the most of what I have left.

For all of these reasons, time has been on my mind.

This prompt made me stray even further from reality for a bit. I wondered if we were able to travel through time, would the portal be somewhere over the rainbow? Would it be a bright rainbow that everyone could see or a faint rainbow revealed only to a few? Would we be able to set our own itinerary for the trip?

Setting the Itinerary

Even though I am working on refocusing my energy on the current moment, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to submit my itinerary for the time machine offered by this prompt. (Just in case it is ever a real thing.)

I travel a lot and I always try to find the best tours to add to my itinerary. I can pack in a lot of adventures. For time traveling, I would book a multi-city round trip ticket. I would like to drop in and out of different moments in time. I would want a guarantee that I could come back at a set time.

Photos

My first stops would be based on my grandma’s old photos. I have been helping her organize her belongings so that she can move into an assisted living apartment. This has already been an adventure that puts the importance of things and people into perspective, but since I am creating a time-travel itinerary, I would select some of her photos as portals. I would carry them with me over the rainbow as destinations on my navigation map.

I would love to join my grandpa for a day or two during his time in the Korean War. The time period when my grandma was a child and a teenager would also be on the map, as would some other family events before I was born and even some that I attended but was too young to remember. These excursions would broaden my perspective and afford me some lessons I could bring back as souvenirs to better prepare me for the rest of my life.

Time Keeper

In a way, I am already the self-proclaimed timekeeper in my family. I have assumed the responsibility to decide when we postpone birthdays or other holidays if they fall outside of our planned time together. Father’s Day was postponed this year. The actual holiday fell a week before my only sister and I planned to arrive at my parent's house for vacation.

Before our rescheduled Father’s Day dinner, my sister and I visited our grandam. She sent a box of pictures home with us for my dad. They were at the perfect time for our celebration. We used several of the photos as the centerpiece on our table.

We dove into each of these captured moments. We asked, when, where, and most importantly, why. Who knew he got sent home from high school one day for wearing a Stroh’s beer shirt and that he hitchhiked across the state the day after graduation? And, some of those haircuts and outfit choices? We had a lot of great laughs. I think we enjoyed reminiscing more than my dad did but, I guess, time travel isn’t for everyone.

Goodbyes

Goodbyes call for a few more stops in the past. As most people probably wish for, I wish I could go back and have a more proper goodbye with my maternal grandmother, my paternal grandfather, and one of my good friends. They each spent quite a while battling illnesses before they passed away. Both grandparents had even reached what I would consider old-age, over eighty.

I had time to say proper goodbyes to all three of them as their health declined, but at the time I didn’t really know how. Actually, today I am still not sure how to get everything I would want out of these final moments, so I would need to do a lot of thinking in preparation for this part of my trip.

Looking Ahead

Seeing what the future holds could help me decide how to make the best next steps. It could reduce the amount of time I may waste on trial and error. I could more quickly find the right position from which to help others. A look ahead could also reduce my anxiety and maybe some of my fears.

If I had to choose my top two destinations in my future timeline, I would choose my writing life and my marriage. I think those are my two most important gifts and I would use this opportunity to gather insight to ensure that I nurture these two parts of my life as much as possible. I believe that my husband and I met each other to join together on a mission to help others. I believe my writing will become my most powerful tool to help others.

Back to Reality

Now, back to home base, back to reality, and back to focusing on the present moment. I still believe awe practices are my best chance at making impactful use of my time and to create the illusion of pausing time at the most significant moments. Feelings of awe can help with our perception of time and make us feel more connected with others. This will help me stay in the moment and not worry about the past or the future.

How does time feel to you? Do you navigate effectively?

Final Thoughts

It is fun traveling to my hometown. It is the closest experience I think I will ever actually have that resembles time travel — being transported into the altered setting of my childhood as a character altered by experience in a universe that crisscrosses past and present realities and some slight fiction, based my past perceptions.

I have to admit it is also fun to think about traveling freely through time to gain insight, but in reality, I am happy and completely content at this moment, sitting by the lake writing.

If you had access to a time travel machine, what would be on your itinerary? How is your perception of time serving you? Or not?

Thanks for reading! I hope everyone uses their mind to travel through time as they please and to always enjoy the moment.

If you are interested in exploring the concept of time as an illusion with memories as mutations of time transporting us, check out this poem by Diana Zamoras:

We probably won’t tap into time travel as a reality in our lifetime. Writing an awe narrative is one of the best methods to preserve the moments that matter most. Check out this story by Christopher Robin:

Thank you to Diana C. for providing the space for today’s guest prompt from Simão Cunha: “If the time machine was invented today, what would you do?”

This title is based on a line from one of my favorite oldies: Fly Like an Eagle by The Steve Miller Band