Connecting through time

As I move in my mind away from linear time, where the past is on one end of a charted line, and the future on the other, with this wonderful present just a dot between the two...I try out different ways of feeling and knowing time itself.

It's all relative, as some famous person (Einstein ?) said.

So when I meditate I often have visions of past persons from my life.  And at times I'm open to what they might be bringing me to consider.

What if I were to think of my own self in the past?  Actually I spend a lot of time doing that.

I have no intention to change my life, it's already been the way it is, and though I may have regrets, I am accepting of the mistakes I made.

But what if I were to talk to myself from years gone by? What would I want to say to myself?

Obviously, coming from the Zen outlook of all is Now, I want to explore the past as another now.  I can see myself sitting in a kitchen with 2 little boys in the 60s.  I have several neighbors who are friends, and a husband who goes off to work 5 days a week.  I watch our black and white TV and go to the library to get interesting science fiction to read.  I am not particularly a good housewife.  Where is my joy? I think my children probably.  They have so many needs, their care is my number one focus.  And I don't always know what the best things to do might be.

I know to feed the kids...I'm still breast feeding the youngest.  My 3 year old is another matter.  We watch some of the cartoons and children's programs on morning TV.  We play in the back yard and do the laundry.  Is this the time that I have a puppy? No I think not.

So here comes my future self knocking on the door.  An older me, dressed in simple clothes. I'm not with another partner, like the various religious sects. I'm wearing a dress and black tied shoes.  I smile and offer what? How about magazine subscripions? Somehow I talk myself into the kitchen with my past self.

She is friendly, offers me coffee from her coffee pot which percolates along.  I greet my baby sons...they are so sweet at those ages.  I offer her a brochure about magazines, offering a special price that appeals to her.

I wish I could tell her what may be happening already in her mind, her dreams.  The move from Connecticut to Florida, the divorce that is coming.  But her yearnings are hers to have, mine to remember.

What is the point of my visit to my past self? Not just to satisfy my present feelings that want to connect to the past.  I want to give her a gift.  So I offer her a free magazine, and receive her thanks.  (Of course this magazine will never come, nor will she be billed for it.) My gift? Not the magazine, but the hug I give her as I leave. She's so thin then. I notice her brown hair, compared to my white hair.

I look into her hazel eyes. She looks back to mine, smiling with her goofy smile, and I say..."If you believe there are an infinite number of possible earths happening at the same time, know this."

She smiles at me, somewhat curious.

"This one possible life line that you are on, this one possible earth that exists now, is just one of many possibilities.  And what you choose now, today, gives you the next step for your life going into the greatness of that possible future."

So this wasn't exactly time travel.

My past self was reading a lot of science fiction, as well as Scientific American. I saw the magazines on the coffee table that I made, ceramic tiles in an undersea fish pattern.  That table would travel with me beyond the time when my sons lived with me, and I would let it go about twelve years in the future.

That Barbara fifty years ago was already thinking of all kinds of possibilities. I was happy to nudge her along in her explorations.