About Time
It’s complicated is the social media shorthand for suggesting certain factors in a relationship are far from perfect without having to go into tricky explanations. It’s personal is yet another – code for mind your own bloody business.
This brief essay is complicated and personal. Harrowing to express for these reasons, it ranges over two matters that are central to my own journey and close to my heart. It is rare for me to discuss either, even with close friends and family. Yet they haunt my more reflective moments. Both are about the long now of time experienced over an individual lifetime, as well as over generations...
I have always found intimate relationships liberating, particularly in terms of mutual support during tough times, yet extremely hard work to sustain. Seldom do I envy couples who have been together for decades, though there are notable exceptions. Friends in Melbourne recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and I cannot even begin to imagine them being without each other. My niece Debbie and her husband Roger have been married for 36 years - not especially long in the grand scheme of things. Nevertheless it is evident they were made for each other. With both couples, the years have given them a heartfelt sense of empathy and tolerance, each for the other, within a framework of enduring love that is increasingly uncommon.
Obviously people in prolonged relationships share a treasure trove of experiences - letters, photographs, music and artefacts, marking a journey that is unique to them. They watch with awe and fascination as their children are born, grow up, and have their own offspring. They navigate life’s many glitches and surprises as best they can. Each year they venture on holiday together, sometimes to new and exotic locations, but often to old hangouts to which they return again and again. This happens to be the Maldives in the case of Deb and Roger. And when old age eventually creeps up on them, they accept any physical shortcomings with a gracious nonchalance.
Sometimes I feel a sense of longing - not for this particular rite of passage in itself, or for the variety of emotional interactions, nor the many ups and downs that punctuate each lifespan, and certainly not for the disruptions that threaten to tear at the fabric of each marriage at some stage. What I miss is the uninterrupted relational continuity and understanding that comes through a life partnership.
My mother, now deceased, was sole witness to the first forty years of my life - a spectacle that unfolded over two acts - though my oldest friend Peter had far more than a minor role to play from the end of the first act until this day. In a marriage lasting 23 years, my first wife was co-author in the second of these acts, while my subsequent partnership with Elizabeth resulted in the writing of a third. Both acts ended in misfortune. But out of the heartbreak the fourth, and possibly final act, was conjured.
In terms of the continuous flow of life’s panorama then, my mother, together with my friend Peter, then Valerie, Elizabeth, and now Suna, my wife of 16 years, were present only some of the time in the production where I was lead actor, producer and director. Although the curtain has yet to descend on the final act, none of the other players had (or have) complete knowledge of how the plot actually unfolded from one moment to the next. Each of them knows only part of the plot.
They had glimpses of the action of course, but not the overarching narrative. For example, Valerie never heard me perform my final organ recital at Notre Dame when I was 22 years old. My mother didn’t get the chance to meet her last five grandchildren. Peter did not attend the world premiere of my fiendishly difficult solo percussion work Quete in Sydney just a few years ago. Elizabeth has not met my youngest son. Suna has little comprehension of the scope of my career prior to our meeting. Indeed the only witness to the complete sorry drama was me. Everything else is open to interpretation. Even my own memories, of course, are flawed.
As with couples, so it is with the human species. If we were able to take that living panorama of a single life, any life, and project it back in time we would reveal lost information. If we had the power to do this collectively we might eventually unlock true wisdom. Actually, given the gathering speed of technological development, we might be able to do just that by the year 2045 – the year of the projected singularity. Just picture having the whole of one’s life, including the numerous details, decisions, dalliances and distractions, available in the Cloud. Imagine being able to pause and hit the replay button. Or even to edit bits out!
Technology per se does not particularly motivate me. It is a two-edged sword with upsides in abundance, but downsides too. What intrigues me, even more than the most fantastic technological dreams, is the prospect of regenerating nature; of re-wilding the world, partially with extinct species that, taken out of the food chain centuries ago, precipitated many of the biospheric problems we now face; and of learning from the deep past. How incredible it would be if indigenous wisdom and matrical law from ages long past, could be made available to us today - intact and potent. Imagine sitting at the feet of elders, learning from those who have been watching and caring for humanity and its evolution for many thousands of years, and whose decisions were always intended to stand for generations.
I recall my friend Dr Deon Van Wyk, telling me about the work he has been doing with indigenous healers to bring their voice into the climate change debate. It is very clear that the current pandemic disrupting our world is no surprise to aboriginal elders who have been observing us closely for 50,000 years. Bushmen of the Kalahari have known, since colonial times, that Western society has accumulated far more power than it can possibly handle. The Huni Kuin of the Amazon refer to Western civilisation as their younger brother, replete with hubristic impulses, in their ceremonies.
So how might we consider expressions of time differently? How can we step into an alternative epistemology by noticing more about our granular and flow experiences with time. The expanded now of human awareness, stretching back into the past and forward into the future, should be the canvas for any serious discussions about human progress, and where to from here. But that will require humility. And I am not at all sure that we have the maturity we need in order to retrieve such an elusive quality.
When people ask me about what we need post-COVID-19 my response is always the same. I say I have no idea what an ideal, post-normal society might look like, but it must work for everyone rather than just a few. We will need leadership, but not of the kind we are currently subjected to. We will need governance, but not of the kind that is corruptible and that encourages just a few people to become more affluent than the rest. We will need empathy, to eradicate the erroneous idea that we are somehow separate from each other and from nature. And we will need a leap of consciousness, so that we can solve our problems in ways that endure for generations to come.