1 A Glass of Cordial & the First Problem of Time

I’m alive. That’s a good start. Ideal if you want to write! But I won’t be alive — at some point. At some POINT! (Is it really a point?)
I’m hoping that this change from life to post-life will be wonderful. A sensation of flying through the air and floating down a tunnel filled full of white light. Time will tell of course. That’s what we say. Time will TELL. Ah — TIME! As I hear the clock chime. Well I didn’t but it adds a certain poignancy and rhyme.
We live IN Time. Time and Space. I’m here right now, typing this and it’s approaching 10:00pm. (In fact I’m here again now and it’s just gone half-past 11.) I can move from where I am to somewhere else but I can’t affect time. I can affect my perception of it. It seems that when we do boring things time slows…being in a waiting room or waiting for the proverbial kettle to boil. When we’re having fun, of course, time seems to speed up. Time is quite an odd thing in fact. For the moment I’m not going to delve too deeply into time — but simply to respond to how we seem to be affected by it. Is it linear? Organic? Cyclical? Well we PERCEIVE it as linear. We change from childhood to adulthood; we look in the mirror and see that change. We say that folk grow around us and some effectively — stop. The seemingly endless ticking of the clock finally stopping for them on this planet. Hey this is cheerful stuff. And might I say that coming back to this piece of writing NOW it seems as if no time has passed at all. And yet many things have been done. I am older and even during the past two and a half hours — a little wiser. Anyway — cheerful stuff!
But it may BE cheerful. Death/transition MIGHT be cheerful. It may be that we transition (to use that fashionable word again) to a place beyond this mundane one. And that’s what I’ll be discussing in my writing. But one of the big problems in thinking of this ‘other place’ and ‘other form of life’ and ‘existence beyond’ is the fundamental question of TIME.
Brian May wrote: who wants to live forever? Can you imagine?! Living forever! Now some might think that a great idea — but if we lived forever everything that makes us US would be diluted through time. Think of a glass of cordial — the cordial is your richness and personality in all its wonderment! The glass is the entirety of your life and the water the time that you dwell within. There’s a ration of cordial to water and life can be sweet; a little too long and weak; maybe a bit too much and maybe too short. Now imagine that the water NEVER runs out…NEVER runs out! You, the cordial, become ever more diluted — eventually becoming like homeopathic medicine; then water memory (to pun the metaphor); then so infinitesimal it — and you — cannot be measured and then — GONE! You have become so diluted you no longer exist. I guess this would be pretty good for the ‘ego’! Time having washed you out to sea and no shores left to be washed upon. Not waving. Not drowning. NOT! You are indiscernible FROM the sea. I mean some of you might relish that idea — in the abstract — but perhaps you might think otherwise EXPERIENCING this slow dilution into nothingness.
I’m reminded here of those hapless souls — vampires. Living forever. Desperate to die. Though what would happen to a vampire who was blown up (as opposed to a stake through the heart)? Would their various pieces keep on…molecules desperately trying to reach the Mother Ship of the body? I mean it might have seemed a good idea at the time to get smitten then bitten and have an eternity of youth. Well. Maybe not eh? All novelty eventually becoming hackneyed cliché! And then it’s a question of moping round castles and chatting up serving maids in the local hostelry and/or coaching stop. Hey — a vampire has to get his kicks somehow.
Thus — perhaps when we transcend to another realm the idea of TIME is very much different. Which is all well and good but, frankly, incomprehensible. There is no time without movement. No time — no movement. But if there IS movement beyond, is there therefore some form of time? And if there IS time we’re back to the problem at square one. Time means we’re trapped in an infinite glass of water — to maintain the previous metaphor — and as this glass is infinite we can’t even imagine it — let alone comprehend it — let alone LIVE it!
Let us assume there isn’t time in the next world. Have a think about that.
And WITH that I shall leave you with the thought of timelessness, time-less-ness and say — well folks, until the next time!
Tim’s latest book is: ‘Lyrics to Live by: Keys to Self-Help; Notes for a Better Life’
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lyrics-Live-Self-Help-Notes-Better/dp/1916424821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536311452&sr=8-1&keywords=lyrics+to+live+by
