The Future Is Behind You

Pia Mnnikk

In English, adverbs and adjectives that are spatial in meaning are often used to speak about durations of time. We watch a short film, or read a long book. We might look forward to seeing a concert or realize, in hindsight, that driving somewhere would have been a better option to walking if we wanted to arrive on time -- the location wasn't as close as we thought.

The language we use influences how we perceive or conceptualize time and space. In fact, how we cognize a single word itself shapes our understanding and perception. This can make communicating about our experiences a little confusing at times.

I read an interesting paragraph in a book I found at the library a few days ago, called 'Your Brain is a Time Machine' by Dean Buonomano. I was surprised to discover that it's not as strange as I thought when I recount an event that happened a week ago, and point to places in front of me as if it's happening again. Often people follow the direction of my finger, expecting to see something, and only after realize that I'm referring to something in my visual memory. Common enough when, let's say, a detective is trying to solve a case, yet I do this consistently when recounting an event. Turns out I have something in common with the Aymara people of South America:

"In English, when we spatialize time we place the past behind us and the future in front. ... In Aymara, a language spoken in the highlands of western Bolivia and northern Chile, the word for past, 'nayra', also means 'eyes' or 'sight', while a word for future, 'qhipa', also means 'back' or 'behind', suggesting a fundamentally different perspective in how the Aymara use space to conceptualize time. Rafael Nunez confirmed the uniqueness of the Aymara's spatial-temporal perspective by studying their gestures during speech. Videos of native Aymara speakers show they often pointed forward when speaking about the 'old times', and gestured behind them when referring to the future. This perspective is not as odd as it may initially seem. After all, just as we know what happened in the past, we know what is located in front of us because we can see it; the future, and what stands behind us, that is unknown."

In the Vedas, a body of timeless knowledge contained in the Upanisads, the sacred texts of India, it is said that we do not exist in time and space, but time and space exist in us. Cultures and societies each have their own ways of speaking about time and space, some even using different calendar systems. Individuals, too, may have very contrasting ideas about how long something will take, or how far away something is. Change your language, your choice of words, and you can change your experience.

When I was a child on long road trips with my family, at least once or twice I would ask 'how long until we get there?'. My father would respond by telling me how many more episodes of Sesame Street it was, perhaps trusting that I had an embodied sense of one hour. I don't know that it translated exactly, yet it was a sufficient answer that gave me a sense of where we were at in our journey. As I grow older and my quality of presence deepens, I find that time isn't much of an issue, unless, of course, I'm running late for something that I perceive as very important. Things take the time they take, and often not as long as I imagine, though sometimes the opposite is true. In Bali they have an expression 'jam karet'; it means 'elastic time'. There, time is considered much more fluid than it is in many western cultures. When they say 'tommorrow' it may mean in two days, or even in one week. 'Yesterday' could refer to something that happened earlier that month. Unpredictable right? As a foreigner, how is one supposed to know when their laundry will be ready to be picked up, or how long it will take for visa documentation to be processed? The trick is to drop your expectation and use the time spent waiting as an opportunity to cultivate patience -- and trust -- trust that everything that needs to happen will happen at the right time. By trusting, we allow our more rigid preconceptions to soften and become a little more fluid. In this fluidity, previously unseen options and creative solutions can arise, grace can enter. After all, time exists in the space that is you, and space can accommodate all manner of things. - FMH

*Magic Moment: When I opened the book, I found a handwritten note inside that said:

thinking of you

missing you

loving you

A love note from the future past? I marveled at finding such a treasure. I took a picture of it as a memento and tucked it back inside the book to keep this timeless message of love flowing.