I was thinking about that old movie The Time Machine. (The old Sixties version not the messy remake of the Nineties.) In it, Rod Taylor plays a man who invents a time machine. There is a wonderful sequence at the beginning when he gets into the machine for the first time, and time moves rapidly around him. Out his window, he watches the sun and moon whiz by, as the days move faster and faster. Eventually, he can only see grey. In his room, furniture moves around him; wallpaper goes up and down; gas lights give way to electric lights. Then the room itself disappears, and he is in a vacant lot.
He watches a mannequin in the store window across the street. The hemlines go up and down with the changing styles. Then the store itself disappears. The city goes, too. Now he is in an open field. Trees grow and fall around him, natural features change. then he is encased in volcanic rock. finally, after eons (minutes in his time) the rock erodes away, and he views a new world, where everything has changed, even people.
The older I get, the more I feel like that time traveler. every year, the world changes around me. Things I once knew and loved, places I've been, friends, and family change beyond recognition. Technology that I was just getting the hang of suddenly becomes obsolete. Newton's second law holds. Everything breaks down eventually, even ourselves.
If we could, like the time traveler of the movies, reverse directions by pulling a magic lever, we would. Maybe we could go back to times when we felt more comfortable and had more energy. But we can't. This is a one-way trip from birth to maturity, to change, to obsolescence and extinction.
It seems to me there are two ways we can face changing time. We can resent it, and try to run from it, but that is futile. Or we can change to, embrace the future, and cherish it.
Times are going to change, and we are going to get old, whether we like it or not.
Our other option is to embrace the future. Change can be invigorating, if we let it happen without too much complaint.
As I get olde, I make a point to try to avoid certain things. I make it a point to avoid getting sentimental about the past. Frankly, no one cares much about the way things were when I was younger. I try to avoid saying the words "In my day." This is my day. I plan to live in it. I try to avoid saying or thinking that things were better when I was younger. Old people with selective memories have been saying that line forever, and it really gets tiresome. I try to avoid thinking that music, the arts, movies, books, cooking, of anything else was necessarily better "in my day." Things were different, that's all. Just different.
I will do this for as long as I can, until time and age pull me back into the past. I have to confess that sometimes I do catch myself listening to Sixties rock and laughing at old TV shows sometimes. Don't tell anyone, though.
He watches a mannequin in the store window across the street. The hemlines go up and down with the changing styles. Then the store itself disappears. The city goes, too. Now he is in an open field. Trees grow and fall around him, natural features change. then he is encased in volcanic rock. finally, after eons (minutes in his time) the rock erodes away, and he views a new world, where everything has changed, even people.
The older I get, the more I feel like that time traveler. every year, the world changes around me. Things I once knew and loved, places I've been, friends, and family change beyond recognition. Technology that I was just getting the hang of suddenly becomes obsolete. Newton's second law holds. Everything breaks down eventually, even ourselves.
If we could, like the time traveler of the movies, reverse directions by pulling a magic lever, we would. Maybe we could go back to times when we felt more comfortable and had more energy. But we can't. This is a one-way trip from birth to maturity, to change, to obsolescence and extinction.
It seems to me there are two ways we can face changing time. We can resent it, and try to run from it, but that is futile. Or we can change to, embrace the future, and cherish it.
Times are going to change, and we are going to get old, whether we like it or not.
Our other option is to embrace the future. Change can be invigorating, if we let it happen without too much complaint.
As I get olde, I make a point to try to avoid certain things. I make it a point to avoid getting sentimental about the past. Frankly, no one cares much about the way things were when I was younger. I try to avoid saying the words "In my day." This is my day. I plan to live in it. I try to avoid saying or thinking that things were better when I was younger. Old people with selective memories have been saying that line forever, and it really gets tiresome. I try to avoid thinking that music, the arts, movies, books, cooking, of anything else was necessarily better "in my day." Things were different, that's all. Just different.
I will do this for as long as I can, until time and age pull me back into the past. I have to confess that sometimes I do catch myself listening to Sixties rock and laughing at old TV shows sometimes. Don't tell anyone, though.
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