Don’t Forget to Live!!

When the problems of the world outside seem overwhelming, there is a personal reminder which I find very helpful: Really live your life! Give yourself fully to each moment and live life the way you want to. Whether an election goes the way you want it to or not, you don’t want to miss out on your opportunity to be here on planet Earth. You don’t want to let life pass you by because you were so worried about the future. Life asks us to be simultaneously concerned about the outer issues and also rapturously appreciative of the basic gift of life.

I had a dream recently. I found myself walking in a familiar set of woods with my wife Dana. We were a little bit taken aback to see this place again, like a flash from the past. It brought back a memory of a day long ago when we had walked this trail together. It was a pleasant, evocative sensation.

We walked up a gradual incline in the trail surrounded by some grass and trees. There was a picnic table, and it had the remains of a piece of corn and an open book that I had set down in that very spot long ago. The corn and the book were exactly as I had left them.

I was overcome with a feeling of reminiscence. I held Dana and wept gently, saying to her, “Those moments seemed so small at the time.” Being reminded of our past, of the context that surrounds this moment of our lives, can be such a wonderful grounding force.

In my research into quantum mechanics I question our understanding of time. Most of us, I think, have a mental model of time as a relentless ticking clock. But did you know there is an alternative to this view? We can imagine another possibility in which time is like a filmstrip extending from past to future. In this way of looking at it, my memory of this hike in the woods is part of a timeless chain of events, suspended within my history. This is an important shift in our model of time because it indicates that the past exists within me. The past is available right here and now, allowing its wisdom to be accessed.

In a way, the felt experience we have is more fundamental than the real-seeming physical experiences we have. The feeling I had on the walk—the pleasant feeling of being together with Dana, the happiness, or boredom, or anxiety that I may have been feeling that day—these are the primary underlying reality. The picnic table, the corn, and the book are secondary things, like props supporting the narrative of the play.

Nurturing the personal within the global

This shift in our understanding of time is profound, as illustrated by a simple recent story from my personal life. 

I went to a political march to protest the exoneration of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor. Ms. Taylor, an innocent Black woman, was killed by law enforcement while sleeping in her own home. We started the protest at a local high school, marched a mile or two through the city of Richmond, CA, and ended up at a city park across town. 

Once the rally ended, I had an appointment and needed to get back to my car quickly. I asked the march organizers if they had room in their van for me, but it didn’t feel right to squeeze in with them. I felt a familiar voice in me say, “Don’t bother these people, just walk back on your own two feet.” So I headed down the sidewalk.

I realized, though, that I felt lonely walking back alone. The feeling of not wanting to bother someone and being totally independent was familiar from when I was younger. I decided today would be different. I turned around, headed back to the city park where the group was still dispersing, and asked the first people I saw if they were heading back to where our cars were parked and could offer me a ride. They said sure! 

Here’s where the personal aligned with the global. My choice to follow my intuition opened new doors for me. As it turned out, two of the people were candidates for Richmond’s city council, and we had an awesome conversation on our drive together. When we parted ways, I wrote down their websites and signed up for a shift to volunteer for their campaign. A week later I found myself on the streets of Richmond, knocking on doors for these two urban warriors. Instead of walking alone to my car with a sense of self-pity and isolation, I chose self-care and openness. I asked for help, and in so doing I opened up a door to my “next thing,” another way to make a difference.

Life can seem so heavy. With the threat of climate change, or the COVID pandemic, or violence and injustice in our communities, everything seems urgent. 

At the same time, my life is composed of little moments like walking in the woods, or asking for a ride home. The quality of my life is determined by my feelings, and these feelings matter. I suspect there is a correlation between when we feel a sense of commitment, confidence, and determination on one hand, and the little opportunities we are given to make a difference on the other hand. When we feel those things, we are more likely to cross paths with the right people at the right time to make a difference in the world. By contrast, when we feel self-pity, or confusion, or frustration, we decrease the likelihood that events around us will fit together in a constructive way. Everything that happens to us becomes separate from everything else. Opportunities for change either don’t come or I don’t see them when they appear.

My dream about the walk in the woods is a precious reminder of the value of the near, the personal, the present. It is a reminder that even as we deal with the global issues in the world, we are also busy living the one life we are given. Whether climate change is resolved or not, we are each experiencing a precious opportunity to live and breath here on Earth.

We each have a personal story. Nobody comes away unscathed. 

Chronos gives way to Kairos

In ancient Greek mythology, Chronos was the father of the gods, such as Zeus. Chronos was cruel and devoured his children. The gods overthrew Chronos and chopped him into a thousand separate pieces.

We can learn something valuable from this metaphor. Chronos means time. Specifically, it refers to a notion of time in the chronological sense, the relentless ticking of the clock. Indeed, time devours all of us. It makes sense why the Greek’s thought of time as uncaring and cruel.

When Zeus and his siblings overthrew Chronos they chopped him into a thousand pieces. This is how we think about time now, chopped up into minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. The division of time into separate components leads to a worldview of disconnectedness. We have lost the past and have no access to the future.

But the Greeks had another notion of time, also. Kairos is the wholeness of the moment, history all at once. This is the direction my research points, the model within which the scene in the woods with the picnic table, the corn, and the open book remain ever-present. They are part of “an experience that was had,” a set of emotions which are timeless. I can be transported to those emotions right here and right now. The emotions do not age. I can re-experience the quality of that circumstance in my heart any time, even if I cannot recreate the physical circumstance itself. 

To embody a shift from Chronos time to Kairos time, I suggest we treat the inner quality of the experience as more fundamental than the props (picnic table, corn, book) which make up our world. Then we see that the quality of experience is timeless. Those memorable moments which make up our timeline—past, present, and future—are more real than the fleeting circumstances we find ourselves in right this second. There is a connection between the meaningfulness of our personal lives and our ability to understand what is needed on a global scale.

If we try to fix the outer problems without appreciating the inner journey, we risk creating new problems as we go. Our inner feelings are our guide for making change. Our reminiscence over lost love or special moments is what makes us human, connects us to compassion, and cracks open our hearts.

By owning the fact that our life matters to us, we empower ourselves to live fully. Throw everything onto the table. We are not fixing a broken world outside of us. We are healing—making whole—a world of which we are an integral part. From this place we become fully invested and the possibilities for change expand outward in front of us.