Do you ever find yourself watching the clock? What are you doing when you lose track of time completely? Do you manage time or does it manage you?

When I was a little kid we had a cuckoo clock in the living room. My dad adored the thing. At the top of every hour the little wooden bird would emerge from one of the doors and call out the time with the requisite number of coo-coos.

It was a fancy clock with all sorts of carved wood figures surrounding it. After the coo-coos were done a pair of little Tyrolean dancers would emerge from the other door and celebrate the passing of another hour by spinning around on a tiny platform to the sound of a little music box jingle.

It was powered by gravity through a clever mechanism of weights and chains. Once a week or so we had to pull the chains down to raise the weights, otherwise the whole thing would grind to a halt. What then? No more coo-coos? Did time stop?

Obviously not, for here I am dredging up these memories decades later. Maybe we have it backwards, perhaps time is always stopped, and we are the ones flying through each present moment? When it comes to temporal philosophies, conundrums abound.

Physicists, of course, are supposed to be our experts on this sort of thing. The two main camps have wildly divergent opinions on the topic.

In one corner, we have the quantum mechanics crew. They tend to see time as a fixed element that flows from the past to the present in a linear fashion, measured by external events, such as the hourly coos of the cuckoo clock.

Duking it out from the other corner are the general relativity folks, represented by Einstein himself. This team hangs out in the space-time continuum, believing that time is a fundamental dimension. Here is where we get fun Sci-Fi concepts like time-warps for astronauts traveling near the speed of light.

We dance at dead center of the temporal equation, planting our feet firmly in the present moment. An odd thing to ponder is that fact that all of the various mathematical models are completely symmetrical in terms of past and future. So far, math says it’s the same in either direction.

Our consciousness, however, sees things differently. The past is static, fixed, and permanently narrowed down to an ordered state. While memory and history may offer different interpretations, what lies behind times arrow cannot be changed. What’s passed is past, no going back.

Ahead of the arrow lies entropy. With each millisecond beyond the present moment you inhabit, the potential for chaos increases exponentially. Despite our reliance on calendars, schedules, and checklists, our best-laid plans remain tenuous. Try as you might, you never really know what might happen next.

Average folks like you and I with our familiar subjective experience can’t help but observe time as wildly different depending on which way we look. Our mindset colors the view. The past can bring comfort with cherished memories to hold on to, or trigger trauma that longs to be released.

What you bring to your view of the future is vitally important for your well-being. The agency you have to guide your mind away from fear and towards love, acceptance, and opportunity is your most important tool to wield in creating the future of your dreams. Timing is everything.

Here in Guignier, it’s fig time again. For about a month starting in late August our tree starts yielding at least a kilo per day, and those are just the ones we can reach. Figs inform our every meal and we share the bounty with our neighbor who loads us up on excess tomatoes. Fresh figs, dried figs, figs with chèvre in the oven, fig jam with fromage, bags to go for friends who visit — we are simply awash in figs at the moment.

That’s how time manages nature, (or vice versa). Let’s let nature be our guide and go with the flow. The present moment is ours for the dancing!

Much love and good timing till next Monday!

Merci et à bientôt!

M+

ML #645

Mark Metz
Monday Love Movement Calendar