The definition of time according to Dictionary.com is: the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
Now, to break that down into more comprehensible verbiage, we see that time is connective. It is continuous, extended, infinite, and steady. The way we perceive time is in matters of how we view our existence. There was a beginning, there is a present and there is an unforeseeable future.
Past. Present. Future. According to this particular definition, these events in time are sequential and related; they succeed one another.
But what about when we reach a certain point in our lives, a point that we never imagined we would reach or a point that we had always dreamed we would reach? Do those two moments only succeed one another or is it possible that they are interchangeable?
Let’s say, for example, you got fired from your job last year and you felt lost as to what step to take next. You went searching and job-hunting, but nothing came up for awhile. Then, suddenly, you land a job that pays better than your previous position did and it has a more friendly work environment.
Time passes in your new place of work and you look at the calendar to see that the current date is the year anniversary for the day you had left your former job. You remember how uncomfortable and worrisome that day was; you think about how you imagined no other opportunity coming around for you at the time.
You then realize that you are now situated in a better, more suitable environment that offers you a higher salary and one that you are contented in. The time that passed between the day you got fired to the current moment seems as if it were a blink of an eye. Both days feel as if they are the same moment - somehow connected and linked in time or space.
Now, try and stay with me here because it gets a little confusing, even for my own thought process. If you have ever seen the movie Interstellar, then you can probably understand the association between this idea and the premise of that movie. (Even though I’m still lost with much of what occurred in the film – especially the ending.)
So, let’s just say that the day you got fired, an imprint of that moment, and your, for lack of a better word, soul, was then floating around in space or the Universe. A more upset and confused you is existing out among the planets and the stars, unattached somewhere in another dimension.
Now you have the current, present you, appreciative and elated, creating yet another imprint of this specific moment, to forever be existent elsewhere.
How different then are the two moments besides the fact that a year has passed; you were once concerned and now you’re calm; you had less money then and more money now; and you didn’t realize your unhappiness before as much as you realize your well-being now?
The two are virtually the same thing: synonymous, compatible and corresponding. You can think of this in other terms as well if you look back at your own life. For example, the day you broke up with a girlfriend or boyfriend and thought that your entire world was going to crumble at your feet and that your heart would never love again was just another moment in time. It was just another version of yourself that once thought the weight of the world was sitting at the base of your back.
After time passed, you were able to see that you can, in fact, be happy alone, and you can meet someone who will make you even more excited about love than you thought your previous lover did. Life seemed like it was going to break apart in your hands just for it to be rejuvenated and restored into some other art form that expresses itself as our lives.
Life is ever continuous, present, forth going, moving, and growing. When we think that we are stuck and will never get to where we want to be, we have to remember the moments where we took harbor of these fears just to soon realize that that fear, like us, is transformative.
Because what replaces that angst and that state of feeling complacent, is time. And time, after all, may not only be sequential and succeeding, but overlapping and interchangeable.
