I Have Seen The Enemy

Ah, the ole meditation and near death experience connection. Two peas in a pod as they say.

“…the transformative effects it had on their lives…”

Actually, this is not as preposterous as it seems.

Don’t get me wrong: somebody is selling something.

But aren’t we all selling something in the end?

We are.

But consider the time-perception work of David Eagleman.

To me, Eagleman is creating a pseudo near-death experience to tell us that TIME SLOWS DOWN.

Not yet 21 years old I just missed a bad car accident and I can still remember with great detail the moments prior - the maroon colored car, my friend Jimmy Bell yelling, his hands on the dash, the field in the distance, the chrome bumper -because it seemed to be going in a slow motion.

Can Eagleman and his work lead to treatments for mental illness?

Maybe.

Maybe it can be tied to athletic performance to SLOW DOWN the opposition or the baseball or…?

You see where this is headed...MONEY.

This isn’t to say Eagleman doesn’t have altruistic intentions. He may.

That’s not really important.

What is important is our relationship with time.

Consider this sentence from Proust and The Squid: “Reading changes our lives, and our lives change our reading.”

Why should time be any different?

Time changes our lives and our lives change time.

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Another thing I’ll never forget is my existentialism professor talking about time and how time will change for you when the doctor tells you its cancer.

Relativity isn’t the enemy folks. Be it time or ethics. Relativity is the truth that will set you free.

Time

This article from NPR about the movie Groundhog Day reminded me of my Existentialism Class where we read Heidegger's Being And Time.

I can clearly remember the prof talking about time in this sense and how it changes when your ownmost possibility (death - the possibility of you that ends the other possibilities) and you can read it in this line from the article:

But it definitely changed my relationship with time. 

We love to think of time as outside of us and unchangeable.

It isn't.

Isn't that wonderful? To know that you can change time.

There's an old Leo Buscaglia bit where he asks: what would you do if you knew you had a week to live?

Would you tick away the moments that make up a dull day? Fritter away the hours in and off-hand way?

The Whole Time

This section from Paul Bowels’ The Sheltering Sky hit me hard:

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number, really. How many more time will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that so deeply a part of your being that you can’t conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that.

Isn’t that just a terrible thought? That some memory you cherish, that fills you up when you recall it, when you know you need to recall it, will someday not? Irretrievable from lack of use.

To think of my parents, now passed, and beautiful memories of them once held, now, I don’t access.

And they are gone.

Others held to be sure but…not enough.

Growing up agnostic though I was, I used to think about how delightful it would be, when sitting before god upon my death, to watch the movie of my life. 

I want the movie of my life. So much. I need to know it is there. Not only my parents but my children? I won’t recall this moment where Juju did this and MisterMister did that?

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe before I go to hell, before judgement is passed on me, I’ll get to watch the movie of my life.

Watching that movie, knowing what is awaiting me, I’ll smile the whole fucking time.