Am I Moving?

A few days ago, I drove my grandma home to her place. On my way back I had to stop at a red traffic light. Then there was a moment.
I looked right, into the car next to me and something was moving. Now, I couldn’t tell if it was him, in the black Audi, who was moving or if it was me. I hit the break and looked left, and it was then that I realised it wasn’t me, who was moving but the Audi guy.

Well, you may think: “Great story Christina. I’m glad I came here to read that.” and I have to admit that it’s a pretty boring story in itself BUT as the lights turned green and I drove off, I realised, what just happened was an image for life itself.

I always strive to move forward, it’s my biggest fear, to stand still.
I’m are trying to become a better person, closer to who I am, smarter, thinner, prettier, richer, getting married, having children, a career. Anything is better than not moving. Anything.

And if you think about it, that’s how life is build, that is how the universe is build. The Big Bang sent out an arrow, and this arrow is time. It’s always moving forward, it’s ongoing and we’re getting older every day. So moving forward is natural, we can’t choose it, it’s inevitable. And we want to be part of it,we don’t want to act against nature, we don’t want to be left behind,we don’t want to be different.

And this puts a lot of pressure on us, well it does on me anyway. I’m scared that if I don’t move I’m going to hate myself for being lazy, for being stupid because I don’t know what to do next. I’m scared others might think I’m boring and worthless because I don’t change. This might also be the reason why I lived in three different countries in the past 7 years, I’m constantly driven, I’m chased. Sometimes I start running without looking where I’m going or who I’m leaving behind.
I’m not trying to say that my life decisions have been wrong, they haven’t, but I’m constantly feeling a huge inner precious that prevents me from really thinking about my future and the people in my life, it makes me blind and scared and it makes me unable to ever arrive, stop and enjoy what I have. And that’s a terrible feeling.

I especially noticed this in the car, after I drove my grandmother home, when I drove off, away from the Audi that had made me feel so uncomfortable because for a moment I was absolutely clueless  as of whether I was moving or the world around me. I drove off thinking :” But how do we know we are actually moving forward? How do we know it’s us and not the others? It’s us and not the guy in the Audi? We can’t really tell,can we?” and I panicked. All the panic I had felt since I left university came to the surface. What if I was stuck? What if I was boring? What if all my friends would stop talking to me because I was getting so lame and ‘ normal’ (what does that even mean?) ?

I felt like this for a few days, uncomfortable, terrible, self-pitiful and useless.
Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, I found salvation in literature and in science and I want to share this with everyone out there, who feels like me. Who is so busy moving forward that sometimes they don’t really choose their next steps carefully, who just walk on without looking left, right or back, who are unable to enjoy the present and leave everything behind without thinking about it.

For you I have something that Nietzsche called :” Die ewige Wiederkunft.” . Eternal Return.

This theory says that every moment already existed and will exist again. Every moment returns. We will experience the life we lead again, and again and again,and infinite number of times. Everything returns.

Okay, let’s first talk about the life we think we are leading.
A life, which doesn’t return. In which we experience everything once, a life in which everything fades. Here pain, suffering, joy, love has no meaning, because it will fade. We can forgive, we can forget because time is an arrow and we are walking on it, we leave things,people, moments behind, never have to see, experience or feel them again, it makes us mild and soft.
According to Nietzsche however, everything returns, so the moment we are creating, the things we are feeling will return, nothing will fade.
This is of course a huge burden, a huge responsibility. If we hurt someone, we can’t comfort ourselves thinking that the pain goes away soon and that in a few weeks we and the other person will have forgotten about it.
No, we will know that this moment, the moment we told someone that we cheated on them, that we betrayed their trust, broke their heart, will return, and return and return.
Now, I was talking about less pressure and I understand that at first this doesn’t actually sounds like less but more pressure. But if you think about it, if you think that every step you take has huge consequences, about the responsibility you have, you might stop, you might take a moment and think you might look around and not run forward blindly, only thinking about moving forward, but about your reasons and your motivation and the execution of things.You might understand that time is not an arrow but a circle and that moving forward doesn’t mean walking straight and quick on this arrow but choosing carefully and taking your time.

Now if this is too philosophically for you, I am happy to tell you that I also found some liberation in science, more precisely in Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
This theory says that depending on where you are and how fast you are moving, time goes by slower or faster. And he didn’t mean metaphorically, you know 2 minutes on the chair at the dentist go by slower than 2 minutes eating ice cream at the cinema, no he means actually.
Physicist tested this through leaving an atomic clock on the ground in an airport and putting one on a plane. Time on the ground was actually going by faster than in the air.
This is because movement and time are a unite. Whatever energy is being used for movement can’t be used for time. This means when you move, time goes by slower.
This also means that past, present and future already exist, and they exist simultaneously. If I sit here writing this blog and you are running in the park, my time goes by quicker which means that for you I’m already in the future and for me, you are still in the past.

Okay, so what am I trying to say?

Nietzsche’s theory and especially Albert Einstein’s confirmed theory show that we are wrong.
We perceive time as an arrow that never stops, we are wrong.
Time is not an arrow chasing us, time is a circle. And if this is so, then why are going so fast, why are running into the same direction we think time is going? Why are we getting constantly ahead of ourselves?

So, if we look at time like this, we might be able to take OUR time, enjoy the moment, make the best out of it, choose wisely,take the people we love into consideration, think about our next steps and stop running around like headless chicken desperately trying to move forward. Because we have a responsibility and the future already exists.

So this one goes out the chased ones, the haunted ones, I hope that you, like me, can find some comfort in knowing that you can stop for a while and take a breath.

Christina

(Image: www.sodahead.com)