Sidebar 1 - Ruminations on the Passage of Time

I recently became a father. My first-born, Forrest, came into our lives in May 2009. During the pregnancy, as I was reading about (and mostly discussing with my wife) pregnancy, birth, and childcare I started to have some thoughts about how we perceive the passage of time.

I often hear people mention times that things trigger strong memories. During the first few weeks of the pregnancy, I noticed pictures of my parents with me when I was a baby and young child. Some of these pictures brought back memories that I didn't know existed, and one of these memories is the reason that I'm writing this.

Have you ever thought to yourself "I wish Friday would just get here already"...

Do you remember wishing that you would just grow up, when you were a child?

One of my memories was instigated by both of these statements. I was looking through pictures on a Monday evening, and wishing that I did not have to wake up for work the next morning. It reminded me of being a child and wishing that I could just be a grown-up. How long ago it seems, sometimes, that I made that wish. And now I've been out of high school for almost 12 years. When I think about the time that's passed it hardly seems possible.

The other piece of the puzzle that caused me to start considering the passage of time was looking through pictures of myself when I was a child. In those pictures I see my parents - younger than now, but still looking far more 'respectable and mature' than I feel I will look when Forrest looks at pictures of us as he is contemplating his future, his significant other, or his first child. And it was this realization that set things off inside of my mind.

What if time is not linear, as we perceive it. What if these strong memories and feelings we attribute to 'reminiscing of fonder times' are actually points at which we are closer to the moments that we previously experienced than we have been since. What if time is thematic, or relational. Times that intersect particular interests, emotions, or themes in our life are actually linked in some way that makes them more than a simple history or chronology.

This is a rudimentary design, and certainly not close to being a full theorem on the passage of time. And yet - I feel the more I think about it the closer I am to being able to state it in a way that people will understand. As a word on the tip of your tongue that you can't quite remember... it may nag at you until you figure it out. Or it may be lost to the myriad other events and sensations in life.

It is in this way that I feel that this discussion is not only interesting but also crucial. When I consider all of this within the scope of the world in which we live, it is given a new meaning. Welcome to America, the world with "the city that never sleeps", where productivity means more than FAMILY. If we could understand the importance of such close calls with our personal histories, could we not come to a greater understanding of the 'human condition'?

Okay - this is the first of many sidebars. I would love to hear your thoughts. But for now, thanks to the BSOD, I'll leave it here.