In the excellent movie “Arrival,” which is now out on DVD, aliens come to earth to help humanity (and themselves). One thing that they do, for humanity — while behind a thick, glass-like barrier (separating them from the humans) within their spacecraft — is to reveal, to humans, the erroneousness and primitive nature of linear time. Most of us, by the way, think and perceive exclusively in terms of linear time. This movie hit home with me because for many years one was not fooled by the illusion of linear time. In the movie, there was someone (and there were those) who could see the future as if it was not separate from the present in any way, shape, or form.
Throughout my childhood, my siblings and i knew (all too well) what it meant when my mother would say that she “had a feeling” about someone. It meant that that person was about to pass away within the next few days, even if they were healthy. We always wondered if she’d “have a feeling” about one of us! Whatever it was that my mother had must have some form of genetic makeup (or something) because i tend to see things beyond the mere present too. What i see, fortunately, doesn’t involve death or dying; it entails more ordinary occurrences, for the most part. This has been going on ever since i was a kid. Some examples, for instance: When i was a very young boy, we — my friends and i — would go to the corner store to purchase some snacks, like a bag of potato chips or some Mr. Freezies. My grandmother never went shopping, never went to that store… but on one particular day as we headed toward the store, with the store far from where we were, i had a strange feeling. I felt that my grandmother would be in that store when we arrived there, and that i would be a bit embarrassed about running into her there. When we later arrived at the corner store, she was there; she said something to me, in front of my friends, that made me feel a bit embarrassed. And more recently, for example: I would see mental images of our large garage overhanging door (and wonder why i would be having recurrent images about something silly like that)… and later come home to find out that my wife (without consulting me whatsoever) had a new garage door installed. Or i would have repeated visions about a woman (Sandy F.) who was a direct-care assistant at the school for the handicapped where i worked before i retired. However, she (Sandy F.) was one of the direct-care assistants in some other teacher’s classroom… not mine. (I thought: “Why would i be repeatedly having images of her, since she wasn’t even in my classrom?) A day or so later, i was invited to come to a retirement party for a teacher who was retiring from the school where i used to work; she was the teacher in whose class Sandy F. worked in as a direct-care assistant. Later, when at the retirement party, the woman who i was seeing visions of was sitting right next to me at the dinner table of the restaurant; then they told me that Sandy F. was going to be taking over the classroom as the new teacher. I congratulated her (while she had a big smile on her face)! Just the other day, while still in bed in the morning, i had a vision of being in a vehicle and starting to crash into the side of a big semi truck. That day, i went shopping… and on the way home — in my car — was stopped at a four-way stop intersection. It was my turn to go, after a stop, but a big semi truck (perpendicular to my car) came roaring through the intersection without stopping (only very slightly slowing down). I am more than glad that i wisely hesitated at that intersection!
There is a lot more (much more, in fact), involving this, that one can tell you about, but i definitely think that it is best left unsaid (and private); it is way more involved than what i have ever told others (including my wife)… way more involved. There are very deep implications in all this. Like the movie suggests, we are a very primitive species, though we think that we are highly evolved. The world isn’t flat; this one is the only real viable one we have; we can’t mindlessly trash this one and fly away to escape to some other pristine sphere. And finally, in ending this posting, i will refer to Albert Einstein who said, “For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”