Time

This morning, as I was getting Ethan ready for school I explained to him that one day he'd be as old as I am. That time passes moment by moment and never stops. He looked at me, lifted a sock and said "Sock?"

Time has always fascinated me. The very notion of time "passing" us by. Generally if something passes you then you can go back and get it or, as in a passing car's sake, you can catch up to it. It's interested that time passes us, but we can't stop to allow it to catch up to us.

In fact it is only possible that we are passing through time, and time has no desire to catch up with us.

I had a realization last night. In order to create an extremely accurate simulation of our world in a computer it would require us to be able to calculate a huge number of things which nature is doing on it's own. For example, my distribution of weight on the ground affects the way my viewpoint changes. The vertebrae in my back, the muscles moving, the ground texture, etc.

I then realized that there is a gigantic number of calculations being done every minute. Even as my fingers type this. As my finger comes down to press the key the atomic structure of the plastic interacts with the atomic structure of my skin based on the force which is pressing down. This interaction could be calculated by us, but instead the laws of physics cause the appropriate actions to happen. We've already been down the road of what happens from there. :-)

So, is something actually calculating it, or have all the calculations been premade, and each atom knows how it should react and thus due to the laws of physics reacts the way it does? At this point I wondered if we had free will, because if the calculations have been predone then maybe our own thought processes have been premade, not in terms of a diety or god, but in terms of the universe.

I then realized that there could be, just as in a video game for example, calculations made to say what happens when you crash a car into a lightpole... but nothing's FORCING you to do that. So I came to the conclusion that I am in no way qualified to say how we got here, or what we're doing here. I am simply grateful we are here.

In that moment, as I mentioned in the mindfullness blog, I became aware that life was not always as I perceived it, and that I didn't have to be afraid of it anymore. That of course may not be permanent, since all things change... but it's hard not to feel good when work is good, your son can listen to you discussing the laws of time, and you are going on a 3 day gaming retreat. I may write something tomorrow but it might not be as long....