Time

I've been thinking about time recently.

Not in the usual, very practical way - as in 'OMG I don't have enough time to do everything' - but in more an abstract way.

I was thinking specifically about the way time fixes images in my mind.

The middle school I went to was called Roman Hill Middle School.  I started there in 1978, so this memory comes from either 1978 or 1979; 36 years ago.  And it's as clear today as when I was there.

It was school assembly and it was being taken by a teacher called Mr Wilkinson.  I was never in his form, nor did I have any lessons with him.  I don't think I ever interacted with him 1 to 1.  Mr Wilkinson told a story about a runner who didn't have a great running technique but was winning everything because he tried hard... or as Mr Wilkinson put it, 'He had guts.'

It was the usual moral stuff given out in school assemblies.

For some reason I thought about that assembly, as I have every so often in the intervening period, and consequently, Mr Wilkinson, too.  In my mind he is fixed at that point of time, 36 years ago.  Tweed jacket, patches on the elbows, comfortable shoes, permanent 5 O'Clock shadow, sandy coloured hair, about 50 years old.  I can even remember where I was sitting: about fifteen rows back from the front, slightly to the left hand side of the school hall.

It was with some shock that I realised Mr Wolkinson would now be 86, if he's still alive.

I thought about it some more and it's a common theme, this fixing a memory at a point in time.  I remember being introduced to a friend's girlfriend in 1986, it was the only time I ever met this girl and I never knew her name.  We were all 18 and her image is fixed in my memory at that point... she's now 46 years old.

It's not worrying me per se, because I don't worry about things like time passing; there's nothing I can do about it and there's lots of other things to worry about.

But it did remind me that time is not linear; seconds, minutes, hours and days are simply human constructs to help us make sense of the journey we're on.  Actually I can jump back in time 36 years instantly - that single point in time in school assembly is imprinted on my memory exactly how it was.

It also reminded me that it's very important to raise your head every so often to look around at the world.

These fixed point events must be important for some reason (the assembly about the runner with guts was pretty much the same as a hundred other assemblies I had to sit through and yet it it stuck)... but why are they important?

I think these fixed point in time memories serve a couple of purposes.  They give us reference points in our lives, like landmarks on a long drive.  They serve as reminders of where we've come from.

But I think they serve another purpose but I can't fathom what it is... or at least if I do know it's sub-conscious.  The assembly about the runner hasn't inspired me in my life, I don't think, and it didn't mean anything at the time, either.

It may be they remind us to lift our heads from the humdrum day to day which accounts for the vast majority of our time.  If we don't we run the danger of not noticing the important things that give us these reference points for everything else and are clearly important moments in time.

'Time is a companion on the journey.  It reminds us to cherish every moment on the way.'

Who came out with that philosophical pearl of wisdom?

It was Jean Luc Picard.  Who said Star Trek wasn't very cultural?