I’ve seen the movie Interstellar a half dozen times now and it still captivates me like the first. There’s something about great acting that can push a film into the elite of Hollywood pictures. Combine Matthew McConaughey with a top-tier screenplay and you have a box office hit.
The movies that send you on a journey through a few hours of a well-told story are the most memorable, and when they give you realizations long after the credits roll it’s fair to say it was impactful.
A movie is just a movie, and a sci-fi thriller needs a basis on which to project what we know to be true, but also hypothesize things we haven’t learned yet. Nearly all of mankind has never put their feet on something other than this earth, yet we can still theorize the outer space that occupies our solar system; among other things. Though this isn’t an article on the movie or an adequate representation of other planets, we can find subjective reasons to believe that there is more than a 24 hour day that repeats indefinitely.
A far too brief summary of the film has:
McConaughey (Cooper) and other astronauts depart from the earth in search of a new home after it is deemed no longer suitable. They travel through a wormhole near Saturn that spits them out into a foreign galaxy with hopes to find a planet that can sustain life. They note key research compiled by another space team on a planet (Miller’s planet) that has potential. Although, the signal from the researchers has ceased, so Cooper and the team set their destination for Miller’s planet to investigate.Miller’s planet neighbors Gargantua, a black hole consuming everything it’s gravity touches, including time. They traveled into Miller’s atmosphere and land in waist-high water. They notice a wreck and scavenge for intel composed by the other research team. Cooper notices a mountain in the distance, which turned out to be a growing wave pulled by Gargantua’s proximity.
The realization came at a price: the team hurried back to the spacecraft as the wave broke over them, killing one of the crew members. Worse, the engines flooded and needed time to remove the water. Once the ship regained its propulsion, the (now 3) members returned to the main craft outside of Miller’s planet. Did I mention the neighboring black hole affects time?
The doors open and a crew member who stayed on the main ship appeared in pajamas looking much older than he had a few hours ago when Cooper and others navigated Miller’s planet. Gargantua warped time, turning a few hours into 23 years. An astonishing consequence given how pressed for time earth was. A few hours cost mankind 23 years.
Let’s imagine time has that capability. We may not know how black holes affect time. The reason being is there isn’t anything we can send into one and expect results. Black holes consume everything. EVERYTHING.
So, time is relative. I’m no mathematician or aerospace expert, but I can imagine a place with shorter days or extremely long years and weather cycles. The fact that we solidified a schedule on earth is impressive, and that makes me believe things can be different elsewhere.
But here on earth, we have 24 hours in a day that can be broken down further into minutes and seconds. We do that 365 times until we completely travel around the sun. Time is there to guide us. It would be difficult to get someone to your birthday party by telling them to come over when the sun appears to be in a specific location. We tell them 2:30 pm and their iPhone lets them know when that is. Problem solved.
The movie makes me think about the world in a structural sense. We get up at 7 am and go to sleep at 10 pm with a hell of a lot going on in between. I say structural because, give or take, people get up in the morning and go to sleep at night. But what isn’t accounted for is the time in between when we do everything we do. You can’t directly compose research while unconscious — that needs a person who is awake.
I’m sure you’ve heard someone say, “we all have the same 24 hours.” It’s lame, but it’s true.
It boils down to what you fill those hours with.
After a spinal cord injury when I was 17 I was stuck. I was entering my senior year of high school dealing with a recent diagnosis of quadriplegia. A year later I was a graduate looking for something to do. I applied and was accepted to a local university, but chose a generic business degree because I was unsure of my future in the workplace. I didn’t have any real work experience, I was young, I couldn’t drive, and anything physically demanding was out of the question.
I ended up taking 2 university courses online for the first year of school. Aside from that, I was driven to physical therapy twice a week. My days consisted of sitting outside or watching TV/YouTube. It would be fair to say I wasn’t doing much.
I was met with a decision. For a year I was the least productive I had been in my entire life. I was stuck without a plan in a world that requires one. Still, I sat board out of my skull while the world moved. Of the seven billion people around the globe, I was one on the border of treading water and drowning.
But there was no shortage of people having the best year of their lives. People were getting married and having kids. Others were getting promoted or opening businesses. Of course, many were met with despair. At any given time people are celebrating extraordinary achievements and others are hitting rock bottom. We hope to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives. We have 24 hours to do that.
I knew I needed to make a change. Falling further into a rut is far easier to do than it is to get out of it, so it’s on the individual to produce a plan. The problem is where to start.
I set up 3 goals:
Increase my student workload,
Get my driver’s license,
And get a job.
None of those goals are far fetched, but for someone navigating a physical disability, they were high-reaching. Still, I thought they gave me the best opportunity to better myself. I spent a year doing next to nothing, and the world moved — I needed to move with it.
I added 2 more university courses (for a total of 4), I took driving lessons and passed my exam, and I got a job selling the same vehicles and driving equipment that I was using. Check, check, and check. It took a year to reach my goals, and I noticed a difference in myself.
I felt a sense of independence having obtained my license. I felt more involved with my school work knowing that I was going to be able to graduate sooner. And I added purpose in my life by having a job to focus on. An enormous boost to my mental health by adding realistic goals.
The matter of fact is that the world will not wait for you.
People will still navigate life just the same whether you do anything or not. By the time you begin working towards something, the world will have changed. The best time to start is now. So, it’s important to remember that your future self depends on the here and now. What you do today will surely impact you down the road. I certainly realized the benefits of goal setting and what comes with achieving each one. It took a year to reach, but it was worth it.
Time moves just the same as it did a millennia ago. Whether you choose productivity or not, the world will surely go on. We spend so little time on this earth that it makes you contemplate what you want to get out of it. We don’t yet have the capabilities to bend time and space, and there’s no way to slow down the Gregorian calendar, so move while you still can. Let’s hope spending time letting the world slip away doesn’t cost you 23 years.
