It's only a matter of time
What if you can send an email to your future self and receive it five, 10 or 30 years from now?
This idea so fascinated Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios that they created "Future Me" (www.futureme.org), a website where you can send yourself an email that will not arrive until months, years or decades later. How far into the future you decide to send your email will depend on how you define “future.” What you say about your present will also depend on how you define “present”.
The Greeks had two concepts of time - "kronos" and "kairos." "Kronos" (as in chronology) describes measured time, such as minutes, days, years. "Kairos" is relative, having to do with seasons, opportunities, relationships and moments. Teachers get frustrated when students come into the classroom without a “kronos” concept of time. Sometimes it is developmental - they are not old enough to have an accurate sense of time. Sometimes it is cultural - they come from places where requirements or requests are fulfilled at the next most convenient time, whenever that might come.
The word “year” is a chronological measure; it changes our chronology from one number, say 2012 to the next number, 2013. However, it does not speak of the times and seasons, the “kairos”, of our lives.
All of us have 365 days in a year, but some of us think they have more. Researcher Melanie Rudd of Stanford University found that participants who felt awe - as opposed to participants who felt only happiness or other emotions - felt they had more time available, were less impatient, were more willing to volunteer their time to help others, more strongly preferred experiences over material products, and experience more life satisfaction.
The study defines awe as "emotion that arises when one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one's mental schemas.”
In 2010, 33 Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped in a mine. On Day 17, the rescuers above received a handwritten note from below: "We are well in the shelter, the 33."
Communication ensued back and forth. How the miners' hopes must have soared and their minds captured by the sounds of movement and each groan of machinery they heard from above. Finally, a capsule could be lowered through a shaft to transport miners to the top. A rescuer was sent down to test the shaft and the capsule There in their midst was a rescuer – an email from the future sent to their past and present: the assurance of things hope for, the promise of things yet unseen. Each miner had to go through their own individual ascent to the light and life and love above. During that 24 hour period, the past, present and future fused into one: some of the 33 were secure in their future above, one was being lifted, and others were still trapped in the past, still surrounded by the filth and degradation of 69 days spent underneath a caved-in mine.
Jill Carattini, managing editor of Slice of Infinity described the Chilean miners' rescue thus: “their journey was astounding but the arrival was everything.”
I like reading the ending of a story first. I enjoy reading about the Chilean miners now because I know the ending; I know all 33 made it home safe. The website www.futreme.org is not particularly interesting to me. Far more interesting than to have Present Me connect to Future Me is to have Future Me go back in time and connect with Present Me. If the Future Me can speak to the Present Me, I can see everything that happens now through the lens of the future. The danger with this is my time perception will be warped - I would live for the future, despise the present and completely ignore the past. As my husband would say in exasperation, “stop telling me the ending of the story. I want to enjoy reading the book.” E.B. White wrote: “there is more to a journey than the mere act of arrival.”
The year 2013 was a difficult kairos in my life. Yet I thrives under the circumstances because, like the miners, I have heard the sound of drills and hammers, the whir of the winch of deliverance capsules. Time is on my side; I sleep more soundly now, clutching a note sent from Future Me saying, "In 2013 and beyond, you are well in the shelter.” I sense the presence of a rescuer who traversed past, present and future; one who was, and is, and is to come; one who said the kingdom is coming, and near and in my heart. I has read the ending of her book. Both my journey and my arrival will be astounding. And everything. It's only a matter of time.
This idea so fascinated Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios that they created "Future Me" (www.futureme.org), a website where you can send yourself an email that will not arrive until months, years or decades later. How far into the future you decide to send your email will depend on how you define “future.” What you say about your present will also depend on how you define “present”.
The Greeks had two concepts of time - "kronos" and "kairos." "Kronos" (as in chronology) describes measured time, such as minutes, days, years. "Kairos" is relative, having to do with seasons, opportunities, relationships and moments. Teachers get frustrated when students come into the classroom without a “kronos” concept of time. Sometimes it is developmental - they are not old enough to have an accurate sense of time. Sometimes it is cultural - they come from places where requirements or requests are fulfilled at the next most convenient time, whenever that might come.
The word “year” is a chronological measure; it changes our chronology from one number, say 2012 to the next number, 2013. However, it does not speak of the times and seasons, the “kairos”, of our lives.
All of us have 365 days in a year, but some of us think they have more. Researcher Melanie Rudd of Stanford University found that participants who felt awe - as opposed to participants who felt only happiness or other emotions - felt they had more time available, were less impatient, were more willing to volunteer their time to help others, more strongly preferred experiences over material products, and experience more life satisfaction.
The study defines awe as "emotion that arises when one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one's mental schemas.”
In 2010, 33 Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped in a mine. On Day 17, the rescuers above received a handwritten note from below: "We are well in the shelter, the 33."
Communication ensued back and forth. How the miners' hopes must have soared and their minds captured by the sounds of movement and each groan of machinery they heard from above. Finally, a capsule could be lowered through a shaft to transport miners to the top. A rescuer was sent down to test the shaft and the capsule There in their midst was a rescuer – an email from the future sent to their past and present: the assurance of things hope for, the promise of things yet unseen. Each miner had to go through their own individual ascent to the light and life and love above. During that 24 hour period, the past, present and future fused into one: some of the 33 were secure in their future above, one was being lifted, and others were still trapped in the past, still surrounded by the filth and degradation of 69 days spent underneath a caved-in mine.
Jill Carattini, managing editor of Slice of Infinity described the Chilean miners' rescue thus: “their journey was astounding but the arrival was everything.”
I like reading the ending of a story first. I enjoy reading about the Chilean miners now because I know the ending; I know all 33 made it home safe. The website www.futreme.org is not particularly interesting to me. Far more interesting than to have Present Me connect to Future Me is to have Future Me go back in time and connect with Present Me. If the Future Me can speak to the Present Me, I can see everything that happens now through the lens of the future. The danger with this is my time perception will be warped - I would live for the future, despise the present and completely ignore the past. As my husband would say in exasperation, “stop telling me the ending of the story. I want to enjoy reading the book.” E.B. White wrote: “there is more to a journey than the mere act of arrival.”
The year 2013 was a difficult kairos in my life. Yet I thrives under the circumstances because, like the miners, I have heard the sound of drills and hammers, the whir of the winch of deliverance capsules. Time is on my side; I sleep more soundly now, clutching a note sent from Future Me saying, "In 2013 and beyond, you are well in the shelter.” I sense the presence of a rescuer who traversed past, present and future; one who was, and is, and is to come; one who said the kingdom is coming, and near and in my heart. I has read the ending of her book. Both my journey and my arrival will be astounding. And everything. It's only a matter of time.
