The Fatal Fall

I grew up in a household of mostly boys. Constantly looking for ways to entertain ourselves, we three brothers invented countless curious psychological games. The way the brain works, and how it connects with the real, objective world constituted for us an endless source of fascination.

While yet attending grade school, in one of these games I peacefully recline on our living room floor. I look straight up, with only the ceiling in my visual field of view, and gaze at it until my memory of the floor and walls melts away. I imagine the gravitational force of the earth flips in direction and, instead of pulling things toward it, the earth pushes everything I see away from it.

The ceiling magically transforms into my new "floor"– upon which I could walk, if I wanted. The lamps, previously hanging down from the ceiling, now sprout up oddly from this new "floor," held aloft by rigid "steel rods" (formerly, flexible hanging cords). I rather fancy these new lights, mounted so close to and illuminating the "floor"– why haven't we always had them there?

The doorways morph into queer, step-over portals, akin to those used by submariners to move between watertight compartments. And a fairly large painting of a landscape hangs on the wall– for some odd reason, just a couple of feet off the floor. Even more outlandish, no one seemed to realize they hung it upside-down.

Now fully acclimated to my inverted world, I enlarge my view of it and begin looking "higher" up the walls, toward the "ceiling" to which I cling. I am shocked by the sight of diverse furniture– chairs, a sofa, a footstool, even a card-table– all of which my parents, for some bizarre and twisted reason, have glued to this "ceiling." This will be a huge mess, and dangerous, if the glue eventually releases and the heavy sofa smashes "down" onto my unsuspecting little brother.

Finally my mother enters my view, freakishly walking somehow on my "ceiling." How can she do that? She is breaking the laws of physics! The absurdity breaks the spell, my fantasy dissolves, and in seconds I return to conventional reality, lying on the real floor.

We delighted ourselves intermittently with such wondrous reveries. On other occasions I indulged in what I thought of as mental "time-travel." Once, during a particularly cold midwest winter, I dwelt upon an imagination that a beautiful springtime already burgeoned outside. After spending quite a while in this meditation, I "remembered" having seen, that very day, incredible displays of redbud and dogwood trees in fullest bloom (though, in reality, the calendar stated it was mid-January).

My most affecting "time travel" inventions involved instantaneously "transporting" myself to some future point in my life. I imagined what it might be like if I awoke one morning, and instead of being ten years old, I was actually fifty, and somehow my mind had been perfectly filled with an entire fifty-years-worth of precise and realistic memories. The more I pondered this possibility, the more I realized how, if it really happened, I would not be able to detect whether the instant "time transportation" had actually occurred, or not. More to the point, maybe I never even lived the ten years I thought I had. Was this life I lived merely some kind of strange dream?

Now, here I am at the age of sixty-five. Did I wake up this morning, having been ten years old only yesterday? It certainly seems now as if it might be true. The memories I have of living as a little boy in the 1950s often seem as vivid and immediate as the ones I formed over the past twelve months. It truly feels as if yesterday I was ten, or twenty, or thirty. I look at myself in the mirror and sometimes don't fully recognize my face in its current state. Is that old guy with the wrinkles, long earlobes, and a bald pate really me?

And wasn't it the Christmas holiday season only last week, though my calendar indicates this is the second week in June?

Of course, we don't have a clue as to the true nature of time. Some philosophers (of science and otherwise) speculate time does not exist and is merely a mental construct. Others revere it as a pillar of objective reality– one of the four physical dimensions of this universe, alongside the three spatial ones. Regardless, time seems to hold considerable sway over how we think, feel, and live our lives.

While time "marches on" (whether merely an internal psychology or external reality), it cannot be denied that our perception of its pace is variable. While I was a boy, time seemed to drag onward at an exceedingly slow stroll. I felt as if events (markers of time) like my birthday, the Christmas season, or summer break from school– "Will NEVER get here!" Although I know of no scientific evidence, this phenomenon appears universal. Certain desirable ages in youth also arrived at a maddeningly glacial rate: Will I ever be a teenager?– Will I ever get to drive?– How long 'til I can be on my own?– I can't wait until I can drink!

Finally arriving at my manhood, things started to change. With maturity came new glimpses of perception where the flow of time began to move at a faster clip. Newly employed as a professional, I overheard myself saying to co-workers on a Monday morning: "Where did the weekend go? It sure flew by– it seems as if it were just Friday afternoon!" And after vacations, my customary comment as I returned to work was: "I can't believe how fast two weeks went by!"

The process continued as I married and then raised a daughter. Both my wife and I marvel at how rapidly our baby became a child, graduated from high-school, and five college degrees later, married and now has a high level job at a major university. Whew!– there's nothing like traveling down the high-speed temporal autobahn.

I now stand in the middle of my seventh decade of life (that's sixty-five years if you're counting), and I enrolled this past week in the federal Medicare program. Though not yet setting dates, I now contemplate what this culture refers to as "retirement." Where did the time go? Time now appears not to drag on, as it did in my youth, but it flashes through my vision with the speed of a dragonfly, and it slips between my fingers like so much water. With every passing decade, the pace of time unquestionably accelerates.

I believe our ever-changing location in the timeline of our lives causes this ever increasing flow rate of time. Our perception of the rate of movement through time depends on whether we are closer to the beginning, or the ending, of our lives. It is something like a fatal fall from great heights.

Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane from significant elevation (as skydivers are wont to do) is an exhilarating sport. The initial leap of faith fills the senses with a rush, as the brain and body naturally reject the abnormal sensation of free-fall. Our organic design intends to avoid such a condition at all costs, because the companion terminating event frequently results in destruction– "it's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end!".

The sport of skydiving turns these feelings on their head, and "makes sport of" what we normally perceive as a portent of death. Shortly after our initial departure from the aircraft, the downward acceleration tapers off and we reach our terminal velocity. Although we still move earthward at a high rate of speed, we no longer seem to fall. In a sense, air friction buoys us up and we are no more in true free-fall. Now the sport fully begins and we revel in the three-dimensional freedom of movement only gained through separation from terra firma.

The earth lies far below. So far, it appears remote and disconnected from our immediate reality. Though falling through space at over a hundred miles per hour, we don't feel we fall at all. The tiny details of the earth below remain tiny details. We almost forget they actually rush toward us. Our acrobatic maneuvers and fantastic choreography consume our attention, and we thrill in the moment.

Sooner or later, however, reality catches up to us and we know the inevitable fact the jump must end. The altimeter on our wrist warns us, the details finally grow in size, and we remember that we do, indeed, fall toward them. It is high time we "pop our 'chute."

Oops– the chute's canopy isn't pulling free and opening. Time to panic? No, just pull the reserve 'chute. Hmmm, same problem. Now it IS time to panic!

Those tiny objects on the earth loom disturbingly, and grow larger at an alarming rate. The closer the earth comes, the more rapidly it appears to approach– faster and faster it rushes toward us.

My life progresses in the same manner, and its end approaches with the same frightening acceleration. My impending date with death stands like a brick wall at the end of my life and there is no escape. How long have I left?– decades at most– years, hours? In view of the immense age of the universe, let alone eternity, my life's breadth shrinks to near nothingness. As James, the half-brother of Jesus, observed:

"...yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." 

This state of affairs rises up in the human experience like a totem of gloom, demanding that we either bow at its feet and worship its undeniable power, or hide from its face that we might not become stone. But there is another way.

By depending on the way blasted through the vale of tears by the power of the risen Christ, we need not dread death's deep power, but, rather, welcome the hastening approach of the end of our days. The nearing end of our lives can signal we are that much closer to an eternal bliss. It sharpens our understanding of the times in which we live and our place in them. And it can increase the value we place on our remaining time in this world.

In the first century, Paul's friends at Philippi were greatly concerned for his life, and so he sought to encourage them by means of a letter. Nearing his own end had already clarified his perspective of life, so he gave them these words:

"...for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." 

May our own understanding of the time we have left on this planet be so clear.

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Image above is detail from Fausto Veranzio's "Machinae Novae," 1616.

>>> Unless otherwise attributed, all text and images are Copyright, Bill Brockmeier, 2015. All rights reserved.