I have tried to make this sequential. After all, we are limited by this medium of expression, words on a page. Therefore, as always, there is a tl;dr at the end, and my post will kind of circle the point before getting to it.
I was reading a book. More specifically, I was reading a short story. Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. The idea isn't new. C.S. Lewis mentions it specifically in Mere Christianity, and I know there are others even if I can only recall this one instance. God is outside of time, so he sees everything that has occurred and will occur, but since we are inside of time, we observe events sequentially, and free will has meaning to us. Free will and foreknowledge conflicting, the curse of Cassandra.
After reading this story, I went to find someone to talk to. Or not, as it turned out. Doesn't matter. Then I went into the garden. And see, I went into the garden because I could not get a conversation partner. Cause and effect. The world as we know it, isn't that so? But that's not the only way of seeing the world.
So as I said, I went into the garden. I poked at something with a stick, which turned out to be bird poop instead of a strange new fungus. Funny how that stuff can land on vertical surfaces. Then I blew on a spiderweb and set a caught fly to vibrating. Spinning, because it wasn't securely caught, but it was dead all the same, so that hardly matters. There was a butterfly. I can't identify the fruit on the tree, but I think those are grapes on the vine. Then I stood in the shade looking towards the back of the house, and it was cold, and I went inside.
Such a clinical description of events, and completely missing the point. (And "clinical" is the wrong word, but I'm using it anyway. Others fit better, but this is the one I want to use, illustrating my point by way of contrast.) The point is that I was out there in the sunlight watching a butterfly. To go out there and be. Not to go out there and do something, or achieve a goal, or...something. But to live in the moment and experience it fully. And just be.
I'm not explaining it well, I think. How do you explain simultaneous time in sequential words?
It crossed my mind, then. Perhaps it's similar to how I feel in the hockey game, or on a climbing wall. There's nothing but me and the next thing to be doing. But even then, there's that next thing. I think maybe that's the appeal of "island time": things to do, but no time frame to do them, so you can give each task the attention it deserves. Person I know calls it mindfulness. I like island time. Not quite the same thing as what I'm describing, but closer to it than the way we normally function.
Here it is, my thought of the day: Go out and be. Not go out and do something. Go out and exist. Whatever you're doing, you exist doing it.
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