Time

Clocks are apparently simple, happy things with no worries. Like feathers in the wind, or perhaps going down a river.

Clocks give us the completely artificial impression that time is cyclic. That if we wait they will come back to the same position they were at before, and that they will continue to do so over and over and over again.

However, time, as far as we know it, is not cyclic (we don't really know what "time" actually "is", but let's forget about that "tiny" detail). Time is not like a watch, nor even a river. Water in a river can potentially come back to the same river over and over again, but time does not go back to before. It just runs in a single direction, apparently towards what we classify as infinity.

That's actually quite a big problem for what we would call "time-travelling". Even if we were to find a way to go "back in time", right here, we would quickly realise how that simply wasn't a very good idea. Even if we were to travel just a few days back in time, as we came out of our time-machine, we would simply die. We would be outside our planet, in a position that the Earth would occupy in a few days, but still really far away from it. But maybe we could go back inside, or have a really nice space-suit to protect us. And then we would probably think: well, ok, so let's just go back exactly one year back in time - surely the Earth goes back to the same position, so then we will be able to land on Earth.

We would soon find out that's not really the case. The Earth would be even further apart from where we would be. The problem is that not only does the Earth rotate around the Sun, the Sun also revolves around the centre of our Milky Way. And there's more: our Milky Way is moving towards Andromeda at even greater velocity; and both are moving towards a very strong potential well at even greater speeds.

So there you have it. Despite our silly/human views of how everything is cyclic and how time is just like that, reality is very, very different. We may not be able to see it at first, because our lifespan is so so small compared to the actual passage of time and its effects in the real Universe, but it is there.

This strange feeling we call "being alive"

There's this thing we call life. It's intrinsically complicated. Weird, as in it probably shouldn't exist. But probably not as weird as being alive.

Life, as far as we know, is quite good at obeying the laws of physics. It simply knows them well enough to manipulate them towards whatever life's "goals" are (does life have a goal?). It does not break the speed of light. It is still governed by the same laws as the things we consider not to be alive. But being alive is a whole other level of weirdness. Because being alive does seem to break the laws of physics. All the time.

Let's be clear: maybe being alive does not necessarily break the laws of physics. But only if being alive is not a "real" thing. Or if it only happens for a period of time that is so short that it doesn't really matter.  Still, regardless of the "reality" of our "being alive" "sensation", we still feel it, and, in fact, we can't really feel anything else. So the entire perception, interpretation and analysis of the "reality" around us, its laws and physics, is fully obtained under this weird state of "being alive". Under this constant "high" that continuously defies and breaks the same laws and forces we try to pin down and understand. So how can we even trust our own ideas of the world around us? How can we trust anything? How can we believe things actually exist?

Being alive is all we ever know. The rest may be either an illusion, or a completely distorted idea of what the actual "reality" may be.

It's never about the tools. It's about the dreams.

We often think about how we would do tremendous things "if only we had" this or that. Nowadays, money is what people usually think they need in order to accomplish something great.

But we are so, so wrong. We don't actually need what we think we need to get to where our dreams point us. What we require is to understand that the greatest, tallest and most challenging obstacles between ourselves and our dreams are our own fears. We are our greatest enemies.

Heroes and monsters

A great time-traveller once told me something I will never forget. I asked him "what was the most striking discovery you have ever made?"

He paused for a few seconds, dropped his usual smile, and with a clear shadow of disappointment in his eyes, he told me:

"That to save mankind and make it better, the obvious doesn't work. You must never eliminate threats, nor should you support heroes. You must do exactly the contrary. A sad thing to discover about our own nature".

I couldn't quite understand it. So I asked him what he meant exactly.

"Exactly as I said. It is by far the most disappointing feature of what we are. It is true that we praise heroes and that we think we would be so much better off without villains. But the truth is, without villains we can never better ourselves. In practice - and believe me, I've seen a lot of things - we need villains. We need horrible people to do the most horrendous things, so that we can unite, react, and define ourselves as not villains and not monsters. It's sad and depressing that we actually need pure violence and destruction in order to nurture our constructive, creative and peaceful side as a world-wide society. But I have seen this happening, again and again."

"But what about heroes and great leaders? Can't they do the job without all the bad consequences, deaths and destruction?"

"No, and that is what makes things even sadder. We believe heroes and great leaders are what we need to be saved and make progress. But that's exactly why they don't really help us at all in the long term. We trust them with so many of our hopes and dreams that we start to believe that they are the ones with hopes and dreams and that without them we can't do anything. As surprising as it may seem, if a great hero and/or leader is never born, society benefits much more at almost any timescale, and people generally live happier, fulfilling lives, than if he or she is allowed to live."

"But how exactly did you find that out?"

"By the hardest means possible".

"How so?"

"Well, my first mission was to make sure Hitler was never born. It was globally agreed as the first best simple experiment to do if we were to 'better'/'improve' humankind and eliminate some of the worst ever moments of our global history".

"How did that turn out?"

"I can tell you most of us were tremendously motivated. It was the first relatively long time-travelling mission, and it was something we felt would only result in amazing things. Can you imagine how much better off humankind would be without the millions of deaths, destruction and the waste of hundreds of thousands of great ideas and projects?"

"So what happened?"

"It was a complete disaster."

A great time-traveller once told me

A great time-traveller once told me something I will never forget. I asked him "what was the most striking discovery you have ever made?"

He paused for a few seconds, dropped his usual smile, and with a clear shadow of disappointment in his eyes, he told me:

"That to save mankind and make it better, the obvious doesn't work. You must never eliminate threats, nor should you support heroes. You must do exactly the contrary. A sad thing to discover about our own nature".

Balace. Life. Where do we stand?

There is a fundamental balance that needs to be kept. Almost all the time.

Present and Future.

There are those who jeopardise/"mortgage" the future in order to live the present.

And there are those who jeopardise/neglect the present in order to have a future.

The first ones say it's because the future may never come, and that we are only alive today and tomorrow is too late. The others believe that while the future may not come, they rather have one in the case it does - and it likely will.

But the balance lyes in between. The impossible, unstable balance of both living the present, because the future may never come, while continuously preparing for the future, because it most likely will.