True Time Travel

I have a time machine. It’s a true joy to possess and I daily delight in the extraordinary wonders it allows me to experience. I suspect it would be judged by some as less stylish than Marty McFly’s gullwing-doored DeLorean, or less beautiful than HG Wells’ time traveller’s machine of nickel, ivory and crystal but it is perhaps somewhat easier to maintain and pilot than either of those. But before I go into detail on its composition and the glories its possession has revealed, maybe I should tell you a little about myself and my more prosaic adventures in the quotidian world?

I have spent the greater part of my half-century and more of life fascinated by, learning about, practicing and teaching the discipline of design. Specifically, the branch of design concerned with conceiving and configuring human environments: domestic interiors, theatre stages, cultural exhibitions, exterior landscapes and such. Creating spaces if you like, and space, as any schoolchild learns, we describe in terms of the three dimensions of width, height and depth.

In the simplest terms, to design a room, the measure of its width, height and depth are determined by the placement of floor, walls and ceiling. Any moderately competent designer can select dimensions for these which would result in a ‘well proportioned’ room but it was Paul Jaques Grillo, in his book Form, Function & Design, who first made me aware of the invaluable importance of another consideration, sometimes overlooked, which is essential to embrace if we wish to truly design for people. He states, ‘No design is done strictly to be looked at. It has to be lived with, and there is no life without motion.’ He is speaking of course about our movement within such built environments; our travel through the three spatial dimensions – entering a wide front door, walking the length of a hall, climbing to the highest stair. However, it was due to my prolonged pondering upon this statement that I was made forcibly aware of another movement inherent in all this spatial activity, but which is frequently unseen or disregarded, and this is our concurrent travel through time – the fourth, temporal, dimension.

In physics, they speak of a mathematical model wherein space and time are combined into a single idea, the space-time continuum, comprised of these four dimensions, but what is perhaps not commonly observed is the curious nature of our travel through these dimensions. For whilst we can move, or not, more or less at will through each of the three spatial dimensions in isolation – forward or back, but not up or down; side to side, or remaining still – none of them are possible without, and indeed we can never halt, our also travelling through time.

We think and speak of time’s inexorable progress with terms that draw attention to change – the passing of the hours, the cycle of the seasons, the aging of our bodies – and it is this very notion of change which I believe lies at the heart of true time travel. Change, it has frequently been ironically observed, is the only constant – all else is in flux – but it is this very quality, it’s all-pervasive constancy, which makes it so very suitable a force to empower time travel. My time machine thrives on the ceaseless inevitability of change. For my time machine is me, my body and my mind. It is from within this imperfect body and with a curious mind that I take very real pleasure in quietly observing the hourly, daily or yearly evidences of change. Is this, my revelation, perhaps an anti-climax? I hope not, for change, whilst frequently seen as being a negative force, I believe can be pregnant with promise; I believe that to truly witness and accept change can be both joyous and enriching. Indeed I believe that it is only through truly embracing change, rather than struggling forever against it, that we all are able to genuinely delight in our journeys through life.

I am not of course the first to make this observation or come to this conclusion, and I make no claims of independent discovery. Many and wiser souls have preceded me and for their insights I am indeed indebted. And their secret, if such it can be called when it is wholly on display, though perhaps seldom recognised, is the seemingly simple act of assuming stillness in the three spatial dimensions. As delightful as movement can be, it all too easily promotes an overload of perceptual stimuli – sights, sounds, smells, constantly assault our senses – and we come to associate our comprehension of the changing environment with our spatial movement alone. Our simultaneous movement through time – signposted with changes perhaps more subtle, yet equally laden with the potential for delight – can become reduced to the point of imperceptibility.

Stillness is essential for the true wonders of change to reveal themselves, for temporal travel to assume its perhaps superior position to that of mere spatial travel. As Henry David Thoreau observed in Walden, ‘It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees.’ And Pico Iyer, in The Art of Stillness, suggests ‘Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.’ Being still; being in the moment; it is this which enhances our awareness of the passage of time, and which likewise permits a joyous embracing of the changes which such passing engenders – watching with pride as our children grow and mature; observing the wonder of seeds planted in our gardens producing plants laden with beautiful flowers and bountiful fruits; or even those changes which occur on a somewhat more grand timescale, such as an occasional fall of rock from an eroding coastal cliff or the changing course of a small stream - prompted by a period of prolonged rainfall.

To fully immerse oneself in the present permits a serenity and freedom all to infrequently encountered in our modern ‘constantly-connected’ world. We seem to be overly prone to falling prey to concerns about our future or regrets about our past – both of which in truth we are actually powerless to address except when they are (or were) our present. Spanning the ages, Augustine, in the fifteenth century text City of God, promotes the practice of ‘forgetting what is behind, not wasted and scattered on things which are to come and things which will pass away … and contemplate thy delight which is neither coming nor passing.’ Whilst in 2014, in the unassuming and insightful journal Assemble Papers, Australian teacher, poet, builder and musician Dominic Bourke is quoted as uttering the poignant and simple statement ‘I lose time sitting at this desk and it’s a sweet, relaxing loss.’ His loss, it seems, is also his gain, and so it can be for us all. It requires no effort and that is, irrationally, precisely why we find it so hard. We have come to believe that we are judged by others - and indeed we have learned to value our own worth - upon our ‘worldliness’; knowledge and experience gained by our globe-trotting excursions. We have bought into the modern obsession with travel in the spatial realm; flying to holiday in exotic locales; partaking in history tours visiting sites of cultural significance; joining throngs of devotees on spiritual pilgrimages, yet remaining largely ignorant of the manifold delights which already surround our every waking moment if we only stopped for long enough to notice them.

Perhaps we all should spend a great deal more of our time (and a great deal less of our money) traveling, with stillness, through time alone. Our carbon footprints could become reduced to the scale of those of a mouse, whilst our serenity and joy might grow to the size of the mammoths of ages past? Time travel is possible. It’s real and it’s tangible and it’s available to us all, at no cost beyond a willingness to be still and embrace its wonders. A daily minute of remaining motionless and observing the small changes within a favourite vista, or a weekly half-hour of quiet reflection on your children’s achievements. Perhaps simply an annual delight in the growth of the plants in your garden.

When next you consider some travel, consider this – would you perhaps enjoy life’s journey more if you simply set aside some time to stay, perceptually alert yet bodily at ease, right where you already are?

• Finalist in New Philosopher Writers’ Award VIII: Travel