Turning 36 - We Are Time Travelers
Did you know that we can bend time? And not on no sci-fi, we-dont-have-that-tech-what-mess-are-you-talking-about type of time travel. I can stretch back to 1999 when I was serenading my own smooth adolescent face, vibing in my bedroom sliding door mirror as I belted out Destiny’s Child ‘Bills Bills Bills’ at the top of my lungs (life hits different when it’s bill free). Or shifting into the time in 6th grade when I desperately tamed my kinky hair I didn’t quite appreciate in the ways I do today, into “acceptable” braids that if you didn’t look closely enough, fell just like my white classmate’s straight hair as a futile attempt to subvert the racism and judgment around me. I love my curls now but do yearn for the fresh and froggy back and springy knees I had back then, but I don’t have it like that unfortunately.
Mindfulness practitioners remind us of our power as accidental time travelers - we can teleport mentally to the past through rehashing and reliving old events and memories stored in every fold of our minds. We replay scenes, conversations, sensations, titillations, hurts, wins, loves like broken records with scratched up songs, not knowing we are viewing the past as if it was present. We can jump to the future through our dreams, imagining what could be - both through the anxiety of uncertainty, or the hope of possibility. Looping through past experiences while charging toward imagined futures makes us deeply human.
Some of us time travel more often than others, either stuck in time replaying past experiences over and over and over again that remove us from being present, or future tripping by what could be and not noticing and nourishing what’s happening right in front of us.
As I turn 36, I’ve learned that time is not linear and does what we believe. If our habits are an expression of our younger selves, our past can play out in the present, no matter how much we age. We can get suspended in time at the catalytic or defining event that created that set of habits, particularly if those habits are limiting or dysfunctional in nature. That’s why someone can be the beautiful age of 60 and also show up in the world in the same way they did at 16. Time is an adaptive, morphing mofo that let’s you set its course. It doesn’t complain, it just shows up where you want it to be.
I have had a habit of hovering in the past through physically repeating past patterns into the present. Sitting in continued discomfort of being invisible to some I have held close, not being fully seen, heard, or supported unless I am giving, helping, saving, advising, and accommodating to my own detriment - because that felt safe and familiar, even if at times a dysfunctional dynamic I co-created. Building connections with some family and friends who would not or could not reciprocate in healthy ways or took more than they were able to give. I am the owner of these patterns in the present even if I didn’t originally want to be burdened by them in the past. I didn’t realize these habits kept me chained to a self that didn’t match who I am becoming because I was physically here in spirit but operating from the principles I learned from a time of over 25 years prior. With each year of age, I’ve recognized and shedded this pattern through a reframing of past narratives and trying newer, healthier approaches to how I show up in relationships.
Our time travel vessel is story - souped up and decked out with personal, familial, historical and cultural stories that define who we are, what we care about, how we love, and how we show up in the world. The upside of time travel is by examining our pasts, we can reframe the meaning of past stories like a ripple in time. Instead of me being a victim of circumstance, I can be a student of experience, growing and learning. I love that I can rewrite the meanings and lessons of past experiences and how they reflect who I am now. Time isn’t stuck and unchangeable. My current self thanks me for every moment I live fully present by redefining my relationship to the past and to the future.
Your ability to time travel can be life affirming, or be detrimental to your well being. You can time travel well by connecting the dots of past habits to your present and future self; by re-examing your stories and experiences and redefining limiting narratives and habits that can keep you stuck; by not creating detrimental stories about your worth from harmful events you could not control; by staying present and fully taking in every sense, sound, and gratitude of the moment, and using radical imagination to design and ponder upon a better future. All of these time travel habits can set your life on an expansive and fulfilling path. Our brains have a negativity bias, and if we want to time travel well, we also have to visit gratitude, possibility, resilience, and hope as often as we meet judgment, criticism, contempt, and despair on our journeys.
I know that my ancestors live in my bones and through the stories I hear about them that orally live on from the past. The stories we leave behind become us and are one and the same when we are physically gone. I know the story I have been creating for the past 36 years, through the ups, downs, triumphs, bad knees, and questionable back and all — is a great one.