At 2 a.m. we moved our clocks back an hour last night. This is a large-scale social event with many ramifications people may not think about. Let’s take a few minutes to think together. First of all, 2 a.m. is a construct, an agreed-upon social event. Other animals don’t follow it. Birds and flowers have their own clock, and biologists have spent a lot of time trying to read their clocks. The time is not really about the time; it’s about us. An hour spent in the dentist’s chair is much longer than an hour spent opening Christmas presents. I would argue that it is not only our perception that is different; it is the actual time.

How is this possible? We already know from Einstein that time can slow as one approaches the speed of light; we also know from string theory that the most basic energy of the universe can change, and because of the “observer effect,” even the most basic energies may alter according to our expectations. Time is elastic.

Where can we see this? Pro baseball players say that a hitting spree is often based on their ability to “see” a ninety-five mile per hour fastball or the actual spin on a slower curve ball. For them, the instant slows down. When they are not hitting, they can’t “see” the ball as well. Has the ball changed? The speed? No, it is their focus, intention, and ability to slow time. Michael Jordan spoke about being in the “flow” of a game. When things were going well, all else slowed down for him and he could “ride” the game. Time may be surfed.

I love to flyfish and meditate. To me, they are the same. It matters not whether I am in the flow of a stream or the flow of meditative time. Minutes pass as seconds; an hour passes as a minute. When I meditate, I have to set a timer or time will become irrelevant. I need something to bring me back in half an hour or forty-five minutes.

What if the same flexibility would apply to longer stretches of time? I don’t see that a life is linear, a dipping in a stream that moves on and is never the same. The conservation of energy tells me that nothing is ever lost. That ought to include time. A life is a many-layered thing. A person may be 60, as I appear now, but I am also 35, 18, 12, and even 2. Flashes of those realities, occasionally re-emerge. It’s not a second childhood. The first one never really disappeared. Watch an elder person open a present. Watch closely. Is there really any difference between that wise granny and a six-year-old? I suspect that we may not all live for the same number of the construct-we-call-years, but we may all experience the same layers. The layers may not have the same thinckness for us all, but we all experience what we came here to experience, no matter what the number or length of years.

If I am correct, and time is layered and nothing is ever lost, we may someday have the means to access whatever we want in history. We have devised machines to send and interpret radio waves. Why not a “time reader?” Mr. Lincoln, we appreciate your Gettysburg address and have found it even better “live.” Internally, we already do this. Think of the last time you were caught in a “loop,” the reliving of a difficult moment or a great joy, what you said, what someone did. Its energy, feeling, sounds, and effects are still there. When Shakespeare wrote that there is more to the world than dreamt of in our philosophy, he may just as well have admitted we have senses we ourselves have not developed or understood. We may do that someday.

The beauty of creation is that we have a hand in it. Time is one of the mounds of clay given to us. We may mold it. We may see it as a dirty, useless pile of sticky earth, or the means of creating a face, a statue, a mug. I don’t go to the dentist’s chair in the same way anymore. I may sit in a dentist’s chair every six months, but when I am there, I am actualy flyfishing in Black Earth creek, and a trout has just risen twenty feet upstream. I see the hatch of blue winged olives, the waving of rununculus, and the chirp of a robin in that crabapple on the left. Ah the water is so layered and as deep as I want it to be. Are you with me? Can you see it?