Thursday, February 7, 2013

Time

For the past few months I have been thinking about time, and what it really means.
It is a measurement that we absolutely need in order to exist, but it is just that, a measurement - we exist in this constant continuum of now, like some vast cosmic swimming pool. 
I have led, and do lead, three very distinct lives. The first part of my life was in South Africa, and I carry within me distinct memories of people and events and smells that all are in me now. 
Then I have my life in Israel, with its own very distinctive memories. 
Then there is my life here in America, equally separate and distinct from those other lives, and yet, all the time those three lives exist in me, sometimes overlapping. Like molecules moving about the three lives bump against each other, sometimes become part of each other, and then move on again. All is a constant ebb and flow.
I have had the privilege of meeting up with cousins and friends from my past over these past few months. Despite the passage of decades, of separate lives that have been and are being lived, we instantly recognize each other, and all that ever was between us exists in the eternity of now.
How fitting then, that just when I am grappling with these very elusive  concepts, I went on a trip to Yellowstone. It is as if the vastness, the magnificence of ever-changing nature, mirror the thoughts that have been with me. The cosmic swimming pool is the caldera in which Yellowstone exists now, and has existed for aeons.
And now I am back from Yellowstone, but all I have to do is to close my eyes and immediately be transported to that magical place which exists on our planet, along with all the magical places, and somehow despite their very separate and distinct regions, they also all exist within each other, as we do, within each others' lives, eternally.