This morning, Jason, Sathya and I took a family bike ride on the bay trail. Much of it runs along the freeway. We biked in silence for a long time, and then Sathya asked me, “Amma, why is the earth…. Why is humanity like this?”
“It’s our collective karma, boo.”
As soon as I said it, I realized that he has no idea what that means. So then I asked, “When you say ‘Why is humanity like this?” what do you mean by ‘like this’?”
A long pause. He looks around.
“Factories. Roads. Cars. Machines.”
I turned it around and asked him why he thinks we have these things, but he insisted I tell him what I think. So I told him a little bit about ingenuity and progress, and about people’s desire for things that work better and go faster. About our desire to get places faster than walking, than riding bicycles.
To which he responded, “Amma, what if there was no such thing as time?”
Now it’s my turn to be silent for a while. I'm having lots of thoughts about relativity and the non-linearity of time and a bunch of other things that I don't understand well enough to explain to anyone, especially to my nine year old. So I say, “Well, boo, time isn’t really real. We just all agree to divide up the day into hours and the year into months and weeks and days and we call it time.”
He seems irritated and retorts, “I didn’t agree.”
“Nobody asked your opinion about whether we should have time, huh boo?”
He shakes his head.
“Sathya, if there were no time, what would that be like?”
More silence. Jason suggests we pause at Vik's Chaat House for lunch. We order and sit on the street next to our bikes. Sathya dips his sada dosa in his sambhar and we share a mango lassi. Jason and I start to talk about how we have to get home, all the things we need to get done before the weekend ends. As I finish my chai and we watch freight trains go by, I ask Sathya again what a world without time would look like.
“We would have lots of new friends. I couldn’t call Liam or Oliver and say, ‘I’ll meet you at San Pablo park at 10.’ I would just go to San Pablo park and play with whoever was there. We would just do what was happening when it was happening.”
On the bike ride home, I tried to just do what was happening when it was happening. What a beautiful thing.
“It’s our collective karma, boo.”
As soon as I said it, I realized that he has no idea what that means. So then I asked, “When you say ‘Why is humanity like this?” what do you mean by ‘like this’?”
A long pause. He looks around.
“Factories. Roads. Cars. Machines.”
I turned it around and asked him why he thinks we have these things, but he insisted I tell him what I think. So I told him a little bit about ingenuity and progress, and about people’s desire for things that work better and go faster. About our desire to get places faster than walking, than riding bicycles.
To which he responded, “Amma, what if there was no such thing as time?”
Now it’s my turn to be silent for a while. I'm having lots of thoughts about relativity and the non-linearity of time and a bunch of other things that I don't understand well enough to explain to anyone, especially to my nine year old. So I say, “Well, boo, time isn’t really real. We just all agree to divide up the day into hours and the year into months and weeks and days and we call it time.”
He seems irritated and retorts, “I didn’t agree.”
“Nobody asked your opinion about whether we should have time, huh boo?”
He shakes his head.
“Sathya, if there were no time, what would that be like?”
More silence. Jason suggests we pause at Vik's Chaat House for lunch. We order and sit on the street next to our bikes. Sathya dips his sada dosa in his sambhar and we share a mango lassi. Jason and I start to talk about how we have to get home, all the things we need to get done before the weekend ends. As I finish my chai and we watch freight trains go by, I ask Sathya again what a world without time would look like.
“We would have lots of new friends. I couldn’t call Liam or Oliver and say, ‘I’ll meet you at San Pablo park at 10.’ I would just go to San Pablo park and play with whoever was there. We would just do what was happening when it was happening.”
On the bike ride home, I tried to just do what was happening when it was happening. What a beautiful thing.
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