Section 2
Readers are welcome to use this posting series (No. 1) for educational purposes and I welcome the proper citation/reference back to this source:
Wright, S. (2008). The Curious Case of the Arrow of Time: The Vagaries of Preternatural Aging, Occasional Paper Series, (No. 1), December. University of Utah, Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program, Salt Lake City, UT. 84112
Section 2: Continued from Section 1 (see previous post in this series)
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The Curious Case of the Arrow of Time: The Vagaries of Preternatural Aging (Section 2)
Suspended Aging and Embedded-in-Time
What appears to serve as a kind of frontispiece in J.T. Frazer’s (1966) incredibly rich and comprehensive book, The Voices of Time, there is a reproduction of Pieter Brueghel’s artistic creation titled, The Triumph of Time. It is an amazing and richly symbolic piece of work highlighted with “Father Time” (Saturn or Cronus) on a horse driven chariot and elaborate objects signifying the march of time. While there are other symbols that also indicate time as a cycle and time as an endless wheel driven by supernatural forces, the predominant theme is asymmetrical time (moving forward from left to right) and just below Father Time sits the requisite hourglass. Brueghel’s work is both haunting and meditative. While that art work may not have us rethink the portrayal of time in the way in the way that Salvador Dali did with his paintingsThe Persistence of Memory (1931) and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954), the message in The Triumph of Time is still clear: time will invariably pass and we must existentially confront the time we have and deal with it as the “familiar stranger” (see Fraser, 1987). Time is our constant companion – and burden. It is measured, moving and mysterious.
And it is no wonder that Heidegger (1962) regarded the “Temporality of being” as one of the key phenomenological themes in his landmark work, Being and Time (originally published in 1927), as it related to a critical context in which humans are enmeshed (see also Baars, 2007; Wood, 2007). Our socio-cultural fabric and language is awash in temporal terms, phrases and analogies (see Baars & Henk, 2007; Fraser, 1966; 2007; Levine, 1997; Lippincott, 1999; Northgate, 2006; Ricouer, 1988; Robinson & Godbey, 2000). A stitch in time saves nine. Time out. Off the clock. Face time. Quality time. Stop the clock. Slowing the tenure clock {for those in academe}. Time flies when you’re having fun. The eleventh hour. Zero hour. Killing time. Time will tell. Time heals all wounds. Making up for lost time. Time waits for no one. Big time. Small time. Overtime. Crunch time. Daylight saving time. Like clockwork. Nick of time. Pass the time of day. Not on my watch. Pressed for time. To the end of time. In Search of Lost Time. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. And that is where we shall begin with this section of the review and an interesting statement from Lehrer (2007) about the monumental contribution of Marcel Proust and his literary magnum opus,
The title of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time is literal. In his fiction, Proust was searching for the hidden space where time stops. Obsessed with ‘the incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present moment,’ Proust felt the hours flowing over him like cold water…Proust knew that every time he lost himself in a recollection he also lost track of time, the tick-tock of the clock drowned out by the echoey murmurs of his mind. It was there, in his own memory, that he would live forever. His past would become a masterpiece (pp. 75-76).
And the trigger point for Proust reaching back into time (via remembering his past and sojourn in Combray) was the tasting of a Madeleine cookie and the smelling of tea, which served as a catalyst to create a form of mental time-travel and a suspension of time itself. It is interesting that memory function is connected with the temporal lobes of the brain (the hippocampus within the limbic system) of which emotional responses and spatial memory are closely associated (see Buchanan, Tranel & Adolphs, 2006; Gold, Smith, Bayley, Shrager, Brewer, Stark, Hopkins, & Squire, 2006 for more on the neuroscience details).
Proust’s literary creation was a whopping 4,300 pages (published in six volumes by Modern Library, 2003) and in the last volume, “Time Regained” not only is time the last word (literally) but it also served as a dominant theme throughout his literary labyrinth,
This notion of Time embodies, of years past but not separated from us, it was now my intention to emphasize as strongly in my work (p. 529).
At some point, a reader of A la recherché du temps perdu may wonder what the difference is between the intent “to emphasize…strongly” versus a pathological obsession with time, but Kristeva (1993) suggested that Proust was engaged in a “learning process” that involved “ a return trip from the past to the present and back again” (p. 3). A similar conceptual experience can be found in Erik Erikson’s (1978) interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s movie (and screenplay) Wild Strawberries that depicted the story of Dr. Isak Borg and is laden with symbolism to connect with and illuminate Erikson’s theoretical approach of the human life cycle (see also Friedman, 2000). And time is of the essence in the story and in the dream memoir. The old man will encounter a large clock (and his own watch) with no hands, and one of the many messages to carry from the instructive movie is: what have we done with the time that we have? (the “full engagement in the one and only life cycle permitted…”, p. 26) And if the accounting of the time spent is found to be lacking and unsatisfactory, then a sense of despair is bound to be manifested because “time is too short if not altogether too late for alternate roads to Integrity.” (p. 26).
In Erikson’s analysis, there is the opportunity for progressive psycho-social meaning and enduring significance as the result of the individual navigating through the contextual journey of life, and with limited time left and imminent mortality in later life, there was little regret over the time spent in “looking back,” but whether the outcome be integrity or despair, there was a complete life-time to have it come to fruition, and for us, perhaps a lesson to figure it out – sooner instead of later. Thus, the primacy of the Eriksonian notion of individual and inter-generational interdependence along with the transmission and sharing of meaning and cultural values; all of which assumes the epigenetic movement forward with the ability to “look back” with greater understanding – and integration.
Of course, if the individual is going through the first-the one-and only life but is stuck in the chasm of “adultolescence” (or “eternal adolescence” as Carl Jung would call it) there is the possibility of repeating the same “life” over and over again – whether it be in some hellish Sisyphean loop or a grand cosmological design found in Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence” (see Kain, 2007; Lukacher, 1998). Or in the case of the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, where the person (“Phil Connors” played by Bill Murray) would experience a time loop by experiencing the same day over and over again until he finally figured his own set of priorities and “woke up” to a new day (see Voeltz, 1998). 3
But instead of hearing the “same old song” each day – day in and day out – Proust delivered a counter-argument and his sibylline message gets channeled in Jean’s Amery’s work, On Aging: Revolt and Resignation (1994) specifically in the chapter, “Existence and Passage of Time.” Amery begins his book with an epigram taken from Proust’s Time Regained, and it is here the reader can sample the acquired wisdom of Proust, which is fixed in the realm of posterity,
I had lived like a painter climbing a road overhanging a lake, a view of which is hidden from him by a curtain of rocks and trees. Through a gap he catches a glimpse of the lake, with its whole expanse before him, and he takes up is brushes. But already night is coming, the night in which he will not be able to paint anymore and upon which no day will follow.
And Amery has his own take on lived time,
The more definitively we recognize ourselves as aging persons, the more exactly we experience time in its irreversibility, the more in despair we fight against it, and at the same time and in the same breath the more intimately we belong to it (p. 20).
Kristeva (1993) proposed that Proust engaged in a new form of temporality to help guide the reader through the “fragments of disparate time which are nowadays dragging them in every direction, with a greater force and insistence than ever before” (p. 3). Proust’s artistic creation was the result of his effort to lock in on the kaleidoscopic moments of life in the past, one-by-one, from the mosaic of his memory in order to experience a form of timelessness in a world growing deeper into a dislocated chronology (see Shattuck, 1983). It would be ludicrous to claim that one must engage in a writing marathon like Proust in order to create a sense of timelessness or that the mere act of writing a behemoth memoir is the holy grail to stepping outside of time’s arrow, but it is instructive to contemplate De Botton’s (1998) prescriptions for a meaningful and attentive life based on Proust’s great work (see also Birkerts, 2008). De Botton (1998) proposes that Proust can offer a literary antidote to the modern dilemma of increasing fragmentation and harried time schedules in our socio-cultural fabric,
In Search of Lost Time had the advantage of pointing directly enough to a central theme of the novel: a search for the causes behind the dissipation and loss of time. Far from a memoir tracing the passage of a more lyrical age, it was a practical, universally applicable story about how to stop wasting time and start to appreciate life (p. 9).
If you think you don’t have time to read six volumes of Proust, you are not alone. And because of our focus on the cultural nuances on the vagaries of time’s arrow, I am obliged to make reference to the humorous Monty Python video segment, “All-England Summarize Proust Competition” which is highly contradictory (and ironic) because the contestants have to summarize all 4,000 + pages and multiple volumes in 15 seconds! Although the humor of Monty Python is in the mind of the beholder, the concept of time in this sketch is given a healthy dose of parody and also gives more meaning to the phrase, “So many books, so little time.”
In contrast to the multi-mega-tome approach of Proust, there is the more sparse and pithy language of haiku, which in the form of “death poems,” captures the transient nature of all things and evokes the conceptual notion of Dasein in the Heideggerian sense. Here is an example of words by Kozan Ichikyo (see Hoffman, 1986) serving as an expression and reflection on the slippage of time,
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it
My coming, my going –
Two simple happenings
That got entangled. (p. 108).
Or this classic “frog haiku” by Basho, which is a frozen artistic moment in the transitory process of life and death, and of time and eternity.
The old pond
frog jumps in
Sound of water.
While the reader waits for the froggy plop! to reverberate from the pond, there is the slowing down, a putting on the brakes, an attentiveness, a heighten state of awareness, an enhancement of reminiscence, a carpe diem, a memento mori, and a “gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.” 4 There is also the concentrated effort in making most of the time that we have and that experience in turn serves as a catalyst to reassess our priorities and values. Instead of a Faustian bargain to make up for wasted time, we might want to consider instead some Proustian binoculars instead (Shattuck, 1983). In a highly illuminating analysis of A la recherché Shattuck (1983) proposed that Proust transcended the formulaic opening of Once upon a time… in his writings to create a from of double consciousness (stereologic or binocular vision) so that he as writer and – you the reader – could experience a Twice upon a time. Shattuck explained it this way,
The double consciousness of recognition and re-creation heightens and strengthens our life to the point where it is no longer subject to the erosion of time’s flow (p. 132).
The gateway of double consciousness for Proust was through his “inner optics” of memories and remembrance and then framed into his artistic creation.
And now we shall examine another literary creation that explores time’s arrow and when human development is held in abeyance for one individual while the rest of world seemingly moves forward. At the end of Shattuck’s book on Proust, there is the illuminating comparison between In Search of Lost Time and the folklore story of Rip Van Winkle. Shattuck noted that,
The real sleep of Rip Van Winkle confronts him, when he returns to his village, with a foreshortening of time and a scene of recognitions like the one at the close of A la recherché. Time, however, has bested Rip, passed him by and left him nothing more than his ‘his place on the bench at the inn door’ and a good tale to tell any traveler who would listen to a garrulous old man. Marcel’s literary sleep, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. It allows him to best time, to rise out of contingency (p. 138).
In both cases, the “long sleep” is the symbolic equivalent to death, and Shattuck argued that the stories project a reawakening of a new consciousness of existence that can “resurrect ourselves from the death we face every moment” (p. 139). But there is more to the Rip Van Winkle story than that.
Ferguson (2005) proposed that Washington Irving created a story in Rip Van Winkle that unfolds with many meanings surrounding the familiar tale of the vagabond who wanders away from Sleepy Hollow and into the mountains only to return 20 years later and transforms himself from “shunned pariah into an instant hero.” (see the front cover art, “The Return of Rip Van Winkle” by John Quidor {1849} on Thomas R. Cole’s book, 1997, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging). But by foregoing the passage of responsible adulthood by going off to hibernate for twenty years, Rip moved right into old age where he “arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.” In effect, Rip made a fairly successful return despite his preternatural aging experience and it is here that Ferguson offers a provocative thesis:
Figuratively, Rip dies and miraculously comes back to life on his own terms, thwarting a community that has consigned him to oblivion. Rapid change in America compounds the normal fear of death by forcing the elderly toward obsolescence before their time. These patterns begin in the early republic, and Irving sees them with great clarity. Because they believe that they have created a new world, the first citizens in the new nation dismiss the immediate past and everyone associated with it. Irving illustrates the problem by turning his protagonist into nothing in just 20 years (p. 536).
In other words, while Rip remained “trapped in amber” for twenty years in a state of suspended animation up in the hills, meanwhile back in Sleepy Hollow, the world had been transformed into a new era. Ferguson (2005) proposed that Rip Van Winkle is a story of satire that indicated the generational tensions that exist in the new world where there is a premium on a fast-moving and forward-thinking young republic. For example, those who represented the past (or anachronistically prefer the past) like Rip are left behind as the social threads between the generations were (and are) stretched, and in some cases,unraveled. The new and younger generation becomes the pace car, but the older models are slower to keep up; thus, the gap widens and theoretically so does (or the lack thereof) the sense of generational cohesiveness.
And in our present era, many can relate to the feeling of not staying “on top of things” especially as it relates to the domain of information technology where “clock speed” and “overclocker” takes on a whole new meaning. The replacement rate of hardware and software (and the soon outdated manuals that go with them) is at warp speed and for those can remember the quaint days of the telegraph – no wait, let’s make that the “old” dial-up days of the 28K modem – the unveiling of a fiber-optic 40 gigabits per second connection makes it seem like we are the ones who just woke up from a twenty year hibernation sleep (see Carr, 2008; Weinrich, 2008).
Even though I try to keep up with the latest gadgets and whiz-bang computer programs, I often feel like the Precambrian professor as I try to juggle good ol’ lecturing with instant messaging, texting, podcasting, Blackboard discussion boards, microblogging, video streaming and calls on my phone that acts more like a Swiss-army knife, along with Bluetooth, BlackBerry, Blu-Ray, Wi-Fi, HD, GPS, and petabyte data clouds. And I knew that “time was out of joint” when I recently heard that e-mail was already “old news” (a cyber-dinosaur) and that one of the most important positive aspects of playing video games (as reported by the high-frequency players) was (you guessed it): losing track of time (Wood, Griffiths & Parke, 2006). And to top it all off, the name of the new backup utility developed by Apple Inc. is called Time Machine which captures the most recent state of data on your disk with the following explanation: “As snapshots age, they are prioritized progressively lower compared to your more recent ones.” But the new world of information technology is here to stay and the generational issue of early adopters versus hesitant laggards is just a part of the profile of socio-techno-cultural change.
Speaking of generations past and present (see Gillon, 2004; Strauss & Howe, 1991), the boomers (as example) have always been enmeshed in the world of fantastical, romantic, and metaphysical time adventures. The fascination of time was in the heart and soul of movies, television, music, and literature as the boomers expanded into the American landscape into the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The 1960 film, The Time Machine, based on H.G. Wells book where the time traveler travels into the future (and remade several times thereafter); the Wayback (WABAC) machine used by Sherman and Mr. Peabody in the early 1960s Rocky and Bullwinkle Show; the television show Lost in Space (1965-1968), Star Trek (1966-1969) where in several episodes the crew of the Enterprise revisit Earth back in time e.g., 1969); The Planet of the Apes series; the Back to the Future trilogy where in the first movie (released in 1985) Marty McFly travels back to the year 1955 and in the second movie travels ahead into the future to the year 2015; Time Bandits and Somewhere in Time in 1980; The Terminator series; Star Trek: The New Generation (1987-1994) series with a two-part episode titled “Time’s Arrow.” And what I consider to be as the penultimate example: the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the segment at the end (“Jupiter and beyond the Infinite”) presents a richly textured set of camera techniques that captures the rapid aging of the main character Dave Bowman. The final scene sequence in that movie is so full of metaphorical imagery that it (and still to this day) becomes a metaphysical inkblot that begs for multiple interpretations, especially in the intersection of aging and the humanities.
The topic of time has also served as cohort marker in music, and for the boomers, it might have started with Bill Haley and His Comets (1955) with Rock Around the Clock and then later something was blowing in the wind because, The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records) and along with the exuberance of youth we thought Time Was On My Side (sung by the Rolling Stones), how could we forget that Time Has Come Today (1968) by The Chambers Brothers. Or that it has been a Long Time Gone (1969 by Crosby, Stills and Nash, Atlantic Records) when capturing the angst of the events in 1968 (i.e., assassination of Robert F. Kennedy which just passed its 40th anniversary on June 6, 2008). Sometimes, things were so out of joint, we had to ask: Does Anybody Know What Time It Is? (1969, Chicago Transit Authority, Columbia Records). And along Jim Croce, we strove to save Time in A Bottle (from album You Don’t Mess Around with Jim; ABC Records) and perhaps began to realize that any of us could die – even when young – as Gregg Allman eluded to in Ain’t Wasting Time No More (his tribute to his bother Duane who was killed in a motorcycle accident; from the album Eat A Peach; 1972; Capricorn Records) and so the lesson: don’t waste your time, “‘cause time goes by like hurricanes,” which sounds very similar in message to the lines in the Shakespeare play Richard II, “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” And then while we were Reeling in the Years (Steely Dan, ABC Records, 1972) and hoped we were “stowing away the time.”
And growing up into adulthood we thought we would be out of time by the end of the decade with 1999 (released in 1982, Prince, Warner Bros.), and we finally arrived at the Big Time (Peter Gabriel, from the album So, Geffen Records, 1986), and got a chance to reminisce over forty years in historical time with Billy Joel’s (1989) song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and then felt like we were Out of Time with R.E.M. (1991). Later on, we wished we could be “wasting time” and letting “the hours roll by” (by The Dave Matthews Band, 1998 from the song Stay in the album Before These Crowded Streets –RCA), and with Y2K, the time going on anyway (see 1999 with Prince), and then it was the haunting song “Clocks” by Coldplay (2002) from the album A Rush of Blood to the Head singing about “ticking clocks” and “missed opportunities” which makes us wonder in our turbo-charged world that even if we have gained in life expectancy, why does it all seem to wash-out in an era of what Northgate (2006) calls “accelerated living”? In other words, the more we try to understand it and gain mastery over the temporal domain, it becomes even more elusive in our lives. For many people, time has simply spun out of control. It appears we are not even sure of what were saving when we spring forward with daylight savings time (Downing, 2005). Even the ability to “multi-task” has been called into question as a modern strategy to squeeze out more time. Rosen (2008) believes the new world of “intentional self-distraction” has taken its toll on our ability to pay attention and engage in deep learning, and although our culture “may gain in information…it will surely weaken in wisdom” (p. 110).
Whybrow (2005) captured the modern social-cultural landscape in this fashion with his book American Mania: When Enough Is Enough,
In the ultimate paradox of America’s Fast New World we are running short of time. Time is now our precious commodity. In the headlong pursuit of prosperity we have traded time for money. We no longer speak of ‘passing’ time, and certainly not of ‘killing’ it, but of ‘spending’ it as we would spend money. And so, as with money, we guard our time, we hoard it, and we hunger for more (p. 157).
If only we could control the seconds, the minutes, and hours that tick away in our lives, each day, and each year (see Weinrich, 2008). Not one-shot in life (a la The Deer Hunter) but to be given a second or a third chance in our lifetime and then to pick the one with the preferred ending (see movies Run Lola Run and Sliding Doors and both released in 1998). Just enough time so that we can stop and smell the roses. To get off the hamster wheel and the merry go round, and break out of the nine-to-five grind. To go off the clock and to leave the great river of time. To find a back eddy and deeply reflect amidst the time pollution and what Kundera (1997) analyzed to be “speed as a form of ecstasy” and in his book, Slowness, waxed philosophical and wondered, ”Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?” (p. 3). It is as though we want (and need) an adult-sanctioned “time-out” in our hurry-and-wait existence. I suppose one could point to Kenny Chesney’s country music song (from the album The Road and the Radio, 2005) as an anthem in that direction where he sings that he has been “living in fast forward, now I need to rewind really slow.”
The cruel joke in our 21st century hyper-technological lifestyle is not lost on travelers who rely on jet planes to get them “there” in a hurry only to find hassles, delays, and cancellations so that they are going nowhere fast. Russo (2008) noted in the ironic premise to a new novel, Dear American Airlines (Miles, 2008), where the protagonist is caught up in the “purgatory” of being stalled in an airport where “time crawls…it feels like an eternity.” But there is a silver lining after all as the cancelled flight gives him time to stop and smell the roses – or in this case to write a novel and reflect on his own life. And so, even though we know time to be scientifically Newtonian, there are on occasions where we probably wished it was more Taoistic. To make matters even more complicated, our language systems and semantics woven into our culture beg the question in our day-to-day lives (see Heise, 1997) - Which time are you talking about? The supreme expression (or fear) of this surreal experience is in Baudrillard’s (2005) assessment,
Time itself, lived time, no longer has time to take place. The historical time of events, the psychological time of affects and passion, the subjective time of judgment and will, are all simultaneously called into question by virtual time, which is called, no doubt derisively, ‘real time’… So nothing and no one is truly real and real time does not exist. We do not even perceive the sun in real time, since the speed of light is relative. And so is it is with everything (pp. 30-31).
Whatever time it is we are talking about (i.e., real, virtual, historical, subjective, objective), what if we could stop the clock? What if we take a little detour from the trajectory of time and human development? In effect, we could also place the aging process in abeyance, at least in a psychological sense. And if we could tinker with the “sense of time,” what would be the gains and the costs for both the individual and society?
First of all, we need to appreciate that the importance of time in human affairs is not just a contemporary concern or the stuff of therapeutic intervention for the new millennium. One only has to read theMeditations of Marcus Aurelius (written in the years 170-180) and appreciate his attempts at making a personal philosophy out of the limits of existence and offering guidance in the face of certain mortality (see also Gilleard, 2007; Parkin, 2003). Going further back, Seneca (5 BC – AD 65) suggested in his writings, On the Shortness of Life (2005)
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested (p. 1).
Seneca had the wisdom to realize that although we (for both his Roman friends and for us) may complain how fast the years go by and then express bewilderment and regret at “death’s final constraint,” he suggested that it is we who make life short. “It is small part of life we live. Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time” (p. 2). Seneca proposed that instead of living, most of us are in the process of dying prematurely because we act as through time “were something superfluous and replaceable.” In effect, when it comes to making most of time we have – moment-to-moment – Seneca offers a stoical blend of Horace’s poetry capturing the phrase of Carpe diem, and then a dash of some memento mori, and then mix in Pogo’s (via Walt Kelly) famous line, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” And there are two songs to weave in at this point in the article to match the reflections of Seneca: 1) by The Verve where in their song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (from the album Urban Hymns, Virgin Records, 1997), where there is the modern lament of working and being “a slave to the money and then you die,”; and 2) the other by The Doors in the song The Soft Parade, (1969, Elecktra Records), “All our lives we sweat and save, building for a shallow grave.”
To a large degree, the scholarly work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990; 1998) is very close and contemporary equivalent of Seneca’s philosophical approach by offering a substantive mechanism and practical applications through which optimal experiences (or cultivating “flow”) can occur. Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990; 1998) approach has both cognitive and “hands-on” features (the merging of action and awareness) to the cultivation of optimal experiences. One of the interesting outcomes of engaging in optimal experiences is what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) refers to as the “transformation of time.” He has found that “flow” can change the way we experience and sense time, and perhaps more importantly, when we are in state of complete involvement and intense concentration, we have the ability to break free “from the tyranny of time” because typically “flow activities do no depend on clock time.” (pp. 66-67). Although it is proposed that we have the potential to create time-less and meaningful experiences, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) believes that many American’s simply waste the free time they have by engaging in vicarious participation experiences (“mock-meaningful action”) that mask the “underlying emptiness of wasted time.” (p. 162-163). Csikszentmihalyi (1998) proposed that,
Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scare resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one’s time is allocated or invested (p. 8).
In the context of aging, it can be said that a rich and meaningful life can become and act as a counterweight to time’s arrow (see Klein, 2007). The aging experience is enriched and the continuity of flow activities can help to make living a re-creation such that the aging process is not a signal for reminding us of wasted opportunities or the limited time left – rather it is that time’s arrow can be trumped by a state of consciousness that heightens the awareness of the moment – and the next. This notion is captured in fine form in the award winning novel by Per Petterson, (2007), Out Stealing Horses, where the sixty-seven year old Trond Sander reflects back on fateful events during one summer in his distant past,
Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something that I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct in me and does not vanish when I am not looking (p. 8).
Please follow to Section 3 (Final post for this series) >>> Thanks, Scott Wright
Marcus Aurelius
