Time is going by faster than I ever thought it would...or could. I turned 58 this past January. I'm not even sure how to deal with this fact. I remember when I turned 25, I had a bit of trouble handling that age. I guess I felt as though by 25, I should be married and have a couple of kids already. Turns out, I didn't get married till I was 32 and didn't have my first baby until I was 35. When we are young, we expect our lives to turn out the way we always imagined. Reality is usually quite a bit different. And time does indeed march on at an alarming speed.
I can recall being a child, listening to my parents lecture me about not "wishing my life away" or hearing them tell me that I'm growing up too fast and that before I know it, I'll be an adult with grandkids. Back then, it seemed so far away. But, alas, as usual my parents were right....about almost everything. It seems like just yesterday I was graduating from high school! HA! It's been 40 years now! It seems like yesterday when my first child was born. Nope. He will be 23 this year. When my youngest turns 18 in October, I will no longer have "kids"...they'll all be adults. Sigh.
I'm feeling my age now, physically. Everything hurts when I first get up in the morning. It doesn't help that I'm overweight and not as active as I used to be. Between cancer and Covid, my life has been turned upside down...and sideways. I'm handling all of it as best as I can. There are many glitches that happen over a normal human life span. I've had my fair share. But, I'm still here. My mom and dad are gone, so is my sister. I can't fathom why I've been allowed to stay. But, the older I get, the more I ponder about life, relationships and time.
There is a movie that came out in 2014 called, Interstellar. I think this has to be the best movie I've ever seen in my entire life! No kidding. It's deep and it took me watching it several times before I really understood what it was about. When I finally "got it", it changed me life. In general, the plot is about saving human kind, and in order to do that, they must find another planet. This entails traveling through a wormhole to another galaxy and they end up orbiting a black hole. Through out the movie, you here a ticking clock. This is because of time dilation. Due to the gravitation pull of the black hole, for every hour that passes while they orbit, 7 years pass on earth. At one point, the astronauts are discussing this and one of the characters, Dr. Amelia Brand (played by Anne Hathaway) talks about a love interest of hers that had previously gone to one these planets that she hadn't seen in a long time and was presumed dead. This is the conversations that happened between Dr. Brand and Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey):
Cooper: You’re a scientist, Brand.
Brand: So listen to me when I say that love isn’t something that we invented. It’s… observable, powerful. It has to mean something.
Cooper: Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing…
Brand: We love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that?
Cooper: None.
Brand: Maybe it means something more – something we can’t yet understand. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it. All right Cooper. Yes. The tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I think this quote really gets to the heart of the plot. When they are talking about their plan and how to execute it, I realized that their mission of saving the world or building a new one...is all about love. When Brand says, "Maybe it means something more - something we can't yet understand"...there is a universal feeling of wanting to understanding it. Love is complicated and unique to everyone but we all struggle to cope with it, realizing that there is so much more we don't understand. Love drives us, it influences decisions, it moves us along or holds us back, even if we don't understand it.
To me, this just means that time doesn't really matter all that much. Love does. I can be old or young, I can be in good health or failing health, I can be happy or sad, I can watch my kids be born and grow up and and at the same time, watch family and friends leave this world due to sickness or accidents....or just because it's time for this earthly life to end. Love is what matters. And, you take that love with you wherever we go, however long we are here. Love never ends. Love transcends space and time. If you love now, you will always love. Our bodies are bound by time, our love is not.
Getting older can sometimes make me uneasy about the future and what it looks like for me. But the love I have for others, for my kids, my husband, my family and my dear friends will travel through time, forever. It is comforting to me to know that I will take those I love with me and my love, in turn, will be with them always.
