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Time: Losing A Day In Our Lives…
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Albert Einstein
Time: Losing A Day In Our Lives... Samoa Upolu - Where time will skip 24 hours...
Time: Losing A Day In Our Lives... Samoa country map. Time is an illusion...
What would you do if you lost a 24 hour day? Zapped off the calender. Gone! At 11:59:59 p.m, the island nation of Samoa (not to be confused with American Samoa) will lose a full 24 hour day. Yes, you read it right! This tiny South Pacific island will move from one side of the International Dateline to the other. They will skip Friday and jump right into Saturday. No debates, discussions or acrimony over lost birthdays, anniversaries or vacation time. No deaths or births will be recorded for December 30th either… It won’t exist this year but will play catch up next year. Immediately, my antenna went up when I first heard this. Time is an invented construct. We create it to fit our scheduled needs in every nation and everyone follows along; marching to the drum of a trumped up calender that could be changed in one fell swoop. What Samoa is doing, brings to the fore the conversation around real time; what is real time? Is there even such a thing? Is it just another dimension of reality that shifts as we cross nations and zones? We fall back and fall forward an hour every year… Does the actual day change? Sure, it gets darker earlier but in the real sense of time, did it shift?
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Douglas Adams
Time: Losing A Day In Our Lives... Time falls back and forwards but not this Samoan waterfall - Fuipisia Falls
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t
own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep
it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it
you can never get it back.” Harvey MacKay
When were you last caught in a timezone shift? The people of Samoa have all agreed to give up Friday for the sake of creating a closer time schedule in sync with Australia, New Zealand, China and Tonga. The new arrangement will make it easy to do business too. As it was explained by a Samoan guest on NPR.org this afternoon, for years, being on a different timezone with the countries listed above meant that business was not being conducted effectively. When Australian businesses were ready on Monday to get orders in and transactions completed, Samoans were in Church… because it was Sunday. Now all will be on board and they can work together in the same time zone. Of course, this got me thinking about the illusion we call time. The time zones we live in are created by man and don’t necessarily accurately reflect how/when we use our time. As of now, Samoa is five hours behind the East Coast. However, when it crosses over to the spanking new dateline of its choosing, it will be 19 hours ahead us here in NY and the rest of the East Coast. Is that cool or crazy? What do you think? More below. 😉
“Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… Movement by land and sea...
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… more cars lined up on a narrow street?
What Lens Are You Looking at Life Through? We see the world through different lenses, and even when we look at the same scene, we see different things. Some will say that is the difference between those who see with their eyes and those who see with their entire being. I enjoyed this particular Weekly Photo Challenge: Between so much that I’m taking another look at it… above is a view of the East River; taken from Highline Park. The second is of a narrow street somewhere in France. What do you really see? Cars between cars? boats between boats? cars lined up on a narrow street somewhere in France?
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor E. Frankl
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… the space where the sky meets the sea
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… the choice to cross one of two bridges...
We make choices all the time; some mundane, some mind/shape shifting. Do we cross the water by foot, by bus, by boat or by swimming across? How we choose to cross will depend on our desires and our level of determination. The river, the body of water in the town in France above, reflects the mood of the sky. Gray, cloudy and still. It is free to move, to create strong currents or waves but it can’t. It is contained by its manmade walls and has been tamed to not act as freely. But we have choices to be whomever we wish to be… unless we too are contained by walls we built in our imagination or walls we allowed others to build around us… We are free. Or if all else fails, there is always the downtown NYC skyline with a choice of bridges between buildings to cross; in the background we see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. We choose. What do you see?
“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars – yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments. “ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… memory and devotion...
Weekly Photo Challenge: Between Life And Death Is… memorial markers in Normandy...
When we take time to look around us and take in our surroundings, it can surprise us. We discover colors, shapes, sights and sounds that were obscured by our mental chatter. Our lens on the world shifts from moment to moment and it can be colored by what we see and where we are and, above all, by our mood. My visit to the American Memorial Burial Cemetery in Normandy was a highly emotional one. We walked through this beautifully manicured entryway, calm and serene, quite the opposite of what lay ahead; stark white markers, crosses identifying the fallen from the World War… memories of the carnage left behind by war and the devotion of those left behind to honor the dead. More below. 😉
Memories: The Longest Walk…
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Memories: The Longest Walk... May you always walk in sunshine...
What’s the longest you’ve ever walked in a single day? Throughout our lives, we are on a steady journey, taking a long walk to meet ourselves. We take one step after the other until we get there – the end of life; when all is revealed and all our questions are answered or perhaps we merge into the void. We also take walks for all sorts of reasons. Over a lifetime, I’ve taken many walks – symbolic and otherwise; I remember a walk with a friend across the Manhattan Bridge after a meal at Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn (Flatbush Avenue to Amsterdam Avenue 12.02 miles); I remember walking home from a dizzying shopping spell after I bought my first punk rock clothes in London (Kings Rd to Golders Greens 12.97 miles); Several times a week, I take a 6.34 miles power walk on the Aqueduct. Each walk we take is an important record of our life’s journey.
“May you always walk in sunshine. May you never want for more. May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.” Irish Blessings
Of course, after I saw the movie The Way; a moving tale about one man’s pilgrimage to walk the famous 800km Camino de Santiago, known as The Way of Saint James, I imagined myself taking that walk which would be the walk of a life time… But I digress. My longest walk is actually a memory from adult life; it has stayed with me. More below. 😉
“If we all tried to make other people’s paths easy, our own feet would have a smooth even place to walk on.” Myrtle Reed
Memories: The Longest Walk... May you never want for more.
What prompted your walk? Several years ago, I was going through a tough transition and, feeling somewhat dis-empowered, I wanted to do something to shift my thinking and help me regain my spirit of adventure. I had heard of Tony Robbins Walk on Fire retreats but never felt ready to try it. But this time I was ready to try almost anything; as long as it was legal. I signed up, flew to Atlanta, and spent the next 5 days or so with other attendees, getting positively psyched up for the walk with chants, motivational talks, exercise movements, meditation and self hypnosis. By the night of the fire walk, I was so pumped up, I imagined myself pushing through a firewall. Before our actual walk, we gathered for a final You-can-do-it rally with advice given on how to move through it without getting burned. I was impressed that even though everyone was encouraged to go for it, it was also made clear that if one wasn’t ready, it was fine to step back. This was mind over matter work and we had to be mentally prepared; no one could do that final work for us.
There was so much excitement in the air as we gathered for our fire walk. When it was my turn, I turned within, focused on my goal, and with a steady mind repeating “I can do all things,” I stepped on those coals. I was in the “zone.” There was heat as I stepped out but then something amazing happened, I felt a shift in my mind as if I was above my body, watching myself, and witnessing my voyage across the hot coals. I marched forward like a warrior on that thousand mile path. Time stopped. Everything stood still. Even the din of the crowd cheering me and everyone else on faded away and there was profound silence. Silently, I trudged on, shedding a lifetime of muck. After what seemed like eternity, I took my last step across the fire path. I was done, and with nary a burn or bruise on my bare feet. Miraculous. I remember asking the security team if I could do it again.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”. Friedrich Nietzsche
Memories: The Longest Walk... May all your steps be swift and self-assured.
How did you feel afterwards? With each step I took on that fire walk, I felt a load lifting off my shoulders. The fire of the walking path was searing away the layers of a lifetime of accumulated debris; I felt both a sense of relief and exhilaration. I was jumping for joy and floated back to my hotel room to call a few friends and my family. I was stoked; the positive energy and vibes stayed with me. My outlook on life also shifted and whenever I felt my energies waning, I revisited those moments inside myself and watched myself soar. I still do. It was an amazing experience… What memories of the event come to mind? There’s more below… 😉
