Ripples in Time

 

RIPPLES IN TIME

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

So on this day of blue and green and birds and crickets a little flying insect just lands on the back of my hand having apparently fallen dead out of the sky.  What a curious thing to happen, an event tiny in its physical dimensions but of as yet unknown temporal dimensions.  How far into the future will information of this quirky little natural event stretch?

We are prompt to measure the physical dimensions of any object anywhere between the size of a quark and the size of the universe, but what of an entities temporal dimensions?  Even to measure physical dimensions obviously there is some minimum of required temporal extension, for what is “physical” if not just a word to describe form that persists over some time?

We cogitate without resolution over the mystery of time, but the “mystery” may actually arise from little more than the fact that time is a dimension along which we cannot see.  Whether we view time as perpendicular to the physical dimensions we can consciously observe, or as an unexpanded - hence indiscernible - dimension, or some other mental or mathematical construct, its nature entails that its extension remains invisible to us.  

Yet still we can imagine.  We can imagine physical forms coming into existence, the planet coalescing, the seed germinating, the cloud condensing.  If we dare, in our imagination we can look further down the length of this time dimension and see the cloud vaporize, the tree fall and rot, the planet evaporating under the waves of heat from the nova.

As we can turn the object to look at its various sides and surfaces and dimensions, we can in our imagination examine the breadth and length of the temporal dimension of any object…..or idea, or political system, or life.

Physical dimensions and gravity of any object provide some extension across space.  Temporal endurance and effects and influences provide extension across time.

Interestingly, obliterating an object in no way eliminates its gravitational influence across space.  Turn the planet to dust and its pull on the universe outside the dust cloud remains undiminished.  

What about influence across time?  Does every event and action and choice leave an unending wake in the following universe?  If we could see along the dimension of time how far would we have to look before every last ripple of influence from that insect falling dead out of the sky onto the back of my hand is completely  erased from the universe?  Obviously as long as anyone can read this essay the potential influence of that tiny event continues.

How distant in time would we have to look before we could see the universe in a state utterly unaffected in every detail by the fact we once lived out our life on this little blue  planet?  

If we could see into and along the temporal dimension, if we could see beginnings and endings of not just material objects but the beginnings and eventual distant endings of every consequence of every word and idea and decision and choice,  would we alter our words, ideas, decisions, and choices?

A tiny insect fell dead onto the back of my hand.  How inconsequential and promptly  of no subsequent consequence that is.  But perhaps at a future moment someone is reading about this very insect, its tiny and brief life prompting a thought or boredom or turn of a page, but its influence, like the gravity from the dust of the vaporized planet, extending across dimensions of space and time.
            Perhaps we should at least try to peer down the invisible dimension of time, and in so doing glimpse the distant, obscured, but undeniable ripples of our lives.  In so doing perhaps we can come to take a little more seriously our decisions and choices, so inconsequential,  so momentary, so mundane, and so eternal.

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.