Occasionally, I’ll think about how weird time is. One can move in any direction in space yet can only move forward in time. In some cases, that’s wonderful. Spending enough time to learn almost any activity will result in huge improvements over the years, and it’s nice that that progress can’t be easily undone by randomly going backward in time. However, being stuck moving constantly forward in time also has major downsides. I’ll talk about some of those in the remainder of this post.
As a kid, I remember thinking about how a moment in time, once it’s passed, is gone forever. That no two days are exactly the same and that a day that’s already happened will never come back again. I don’t know what exactly got me thinking about that since that was long before I read, watched, or otherwise consumed any major work about humanity’s one-way journey through time. As I’ve looked into more such works and had more experiences I wish would repeat, it’s been increasingly more on my mind. A particularly poignant and painful reminder is this clip from Fred Penner’s Place in which Ernie Coombs sings about every day passing away shortly after his wife died. I have no idea how he got through that song as well as he did in the midst of what must have been an unbelievably painful experience.
There is also the loss of particular skills over time. I’ve lost track of how many skills are either super rusty or nonexistent at this point simply because I don’t practice them anymore. Magic is an excellent example. Since I haven’t practiced magic in over a year, I can remember almost none of the tricks I learned. It’s been interesting to go from easily doing a variety of different tricks to not recalling how to do most of them. Even with skills I’ve kept up with, I’ve noticed changes in my abilities based on how much I practice, how well I practice, and how my body has changed over time. Everyone seems to lose some ability as they age and find it incredibly hard to do certain activities that they found much easier when they were younger. It’s disconcerting to see my skills at juggling decrease in some ways now compared to how they were at my peak. I hope that regular practice at least keeps them from declining any further.
I wish it were possible to move through time as easily and freely as I can move through space. I’d love to go back to places, events, buildings, areas, and activities that are now gone or not worth me going there anymore. Whether they’ve been destroyed or are far worse than they once were, I miss being able to make new memories there. I’m so glad for the memories, pictures, videos, and other mementos I have of those wonderful lost times with some wonderful animals and humans. Most of all, I’d love to revisit the precious moments I had with my dog Sawyer, a few other animal family members, and my grandparents. I miss all of them dearly and sometimes find myself physically aching over the fact that I won’t get to visit them again for the rest of my Earthly life. I so wish we’d had more time together, that I’d been more present with the time we had, and that I could check in with them once in a while. I hope to learn from my past mistakes in this area by making good use of my remaining time.