Time Travel & Linear Intent

 

Sometimes the best way to learn something new about yourself is by traveling backward in time to face a truth you refused to face at the time it was current.

My work is all about digging in the past now, as I’ve been hired to write the script for a biographical feature film.  Structure and meaning rise out of the research, out of the excavation--pieces of this amazing man’s past connect to his present and the path he is on makes more sense when it is unified in “the big picture.”   

People understand such indulgence in the past for a project such as this--a grand life is different from an ordinary life--the origins matter.  In my own life, however, I’m met with resistance when I dig.  People want everything to be in a neat, tidy line.  The past is a distant echo, not worth listening to. 

Last year I wrote a blog entitled “Being Lovely” in which I noted the importance of living in the present as opposed to being consumed by yearning for something in the future--something we have yet to become.  That wasn’t such a novel idea--living in the present is a pretty popular notion... presently.  Like so many sound bytes, however, “Living in the present” is not as simple as it may sound. 

“I need to remember that it's not about becoming, but rather about being. It is through being that we become...” I wrote...

but that wasn’t the whole story.  I went on to consider that

“...being comes from clearly seeing ‘whatever is true.’” 

Seeing.  That is important.  Just like listening.  Sometimes that distant echo alerts us to something we need to take a closer look at.

While it is true that “living in the past” can rob us of fullness in the present, ignoring that distant echo can also rob us of fullness when it comes to the big picture--it can rob us of integrity, which I believe is essential to authentic living. 

When most people think of integrity, the primary definition that comes to mind is the idea of high moral standards or professional ethics.  That is only the outer exhibition of the heart of integrity.  Moral and ethical behaviors are meaningless, and likely to falter, if they don’t spring from within.  In my opinion, definition two and definition three of the word integrity are the things we need to strive for:

2. the state of being complete or undivided

3. the state of being sound or undamaged
      (Encarta World English Dictionary)

Our world is so full of fragmentation.  We have our professional lives and our personal lives, our public persona and our private persona, and then we also have the linear segments that we sort into tidy little containers.  My old photos are in albums or boxes according to their place in time.  Digital photos are time-stamped so as to be filed away where they belong.  When this system gets mixed up, it’s a problem to be fixed.  In this mad-dash forward--always forward--we are prone to forget where we come from, but that’s okay, we tell one another.  The past is gone.  Let it be.

Does anyone else ever stop to think that we might have it all wrong?  I posed this question on my facebook a while back:

“Do you think life is intended to be linear?” 

Only four people replied.  I loved my brother’s reply: [which somehow disappeared before I had a chance to answer--he may have decided to delete it, but fortunately, I had multiple tabs open, and was able to find one that still had his reply intact]

“I.e., linear intent + gravity -> parabolic course.  Replace gravity with drama, or confuse the two, as often happens, for hyperbolic results.” 

I won’t even pretend to understand the science behind his obvious humor, but I will say that this comment may have come closer than some of the others to the heart of what I was grappling with when I posted the question.  I’m not nearly as smart as my brother, but I am a dictionary geek.  I love to look up words, even when I think I know what they mean, because I always seem to discover nuances and connections that I might not have otherwise recognized.  (And with the advance of technology, looking up things online presents incredibly enticing bunny-trails much to the satisfaction of the A.D.D. in me.)

Parabolic course.  Parabolic.  Google is like Calgon... Google, take me away....  I meet an educator named “Mr. Ree” and delight in his lesson plan on Parabolic Curves.  I stumble upon an article written by a physicist that references the movie, Source Code.  Oops.  Spoiler alert.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t read on until I do so.  It’s not on Netflix Instant View yet, but it is still showing on the big screen at the cheap theatre down the road (and probably not for much longer because it’s down to one 9:25pm showing a day).  I manage to make it to the movie just a couple days before it closes, then head home and read the article. 

It’s all connected.  One of my favorite concepts in science fiction has always been time-travel or time-manipulation.  This journey through research for my work, self-analysis for my psychological well-being, picking friends’ brains with seemingly random questions, searching words that jump out at me.... it’s all connected in a beautiful web that strengthens me and makes me feel more sound, more complete... it may sound like a very strange process, but I find it very healing.

When I think of the third definition of integrity, “being... undamaged,” I am reminded that I have been damaged.  I think we all have at one point or another--life does that.  More word study, more word twisting...  Damaged.  Undamaged.  Are they opposites?  Or are they more like different states of the same thing?  “Un” can mean an opposite state of being--the negative of the root word, but it can also refer to a process--a reversal of an action or a state of being.  One could look at the word “undamaged” and say that you either are or you’re not--undamaged, that is.  But what if we took the word “damage” as a verb instead of a static state of being and applied that prefix in its active capacity... could not “undamaging” be looked at as a process--a reversal (a redemptive act) rather than the state prior to damage? 

So, I saw the movie, Source Code.  I won’t get into the details of the plot, but basically it is about going back (after some damage has already been done), not to undo that damage, but to get information that will help prevent future damage from being done.  The question of whether something can be “undamaged” or whether preventing future damage is the best we can do, is central to the story.  Either way, one must go back to the source--the root of the state of being, the impetus of the current course.  This message resonates with me.  When you’re on a track, speeding along, and braking is not an option, ignoring the past can be deadly.

Long story short, THAT is why I am drawn to examine my past--not so that I can dwell in it, but rather out of concern about averting accidents on the track ahead, and so that I can learn the true meaning of integrity--by being an integrated person.  It seems to me that a complete life encompasses all at once--it's not cut up into autonomous segments, but rather the past is infinitely connected to the present and the future and not just in a brick-upon-brick manner, but more like a web in which you must go back and forth and compare and contrast and connect in order to make sense of it all.  And if one does believe in a God who is outside of time and space, in whose image we are created, that makes the interconnectedness of the entirety of our lives even more necessary to learning to see things more like God does.  

Why is it so much easier to identify patterns in the lives of others than in our own lives?  Could it be because we naturally stand back and look at the big picture when it comes to the life of an other?  Getting such perspective on self requires a level of intent that may feel awkward at first--even self-indulgent, but ultimately, it frees a person to be more truthful, more generous, and to exude integrity.  That's what I want.