It was not until I started working in a garden that I became aware of the reality that time is also circular. Or perhaps better put, a garden manifests circular time within the human concept of linear time, if that is possible. Our gardens have no memory, they just do what they do independent of the human concept of linear time. A gardener plants seeds, watches them grow into mature flowers that produce seeds, the annual flowers die, become compost and then soil again, which is used for next season's garden, as are the seeds. It's a cycle that continues annually in perpetuity, starting in spring, continuing into summer and fall, then winter, and then back to spring. It can continue in this way for many years, given the right conditions. Perennial plants come back each year barring a natural disaster--the same plant, just new stems and new growth. The actual plants don't really die. It's the closest thing to immortality that we may be witness to on this earth. Do we know why they come back, year after year? Apparently there is no specific lifespan for plants, except for the annuals. The annual plants must be seeded anew. But eventually, even perennial plants die, as do our house plants that can live for decades given the right conditions. Death comes to all living things.
I remember my parents, sitting in their living room in the apartment where I grew up, reading in the evenings. I remember my mother feeding the birds from her kitchen window each morning. I remember eating breakfast before we left for school, listening to 'Rambling with Gambling' on the radio. I remember commuting to and from Manhattan for several years with my father, and meeting him for lunch in Manhattan. I remember my father's illnesses and knowing we would lose him; I 'saw' and 'knew' the future. I remember shopping with my mother and driving around lower Westchester County with her on one of our many fun car rides. I remembering seeing a future without her and how painful it would be to lose her too. I remember my brother, who is dead six years as of this writing. I did not 'see' his death coming. They have been dead for many years, but they remain in my memory. All those memories of beloved people, places and experiences co-exist. And that is what I wonder about. Memories are dependent upon functioning brain neurons that transmit electrical signals to other neurons via synapses. Without neurons and neural networks, there are no memories. Plants do not have neurons, so they do not have memories, and so no concept of time, or none that they are 'aware' of. We have them, and so we have memories. But how and where are those memories truly situated in time? Or can we even ask those questions?
There are some physicists who theorize that time as we know it is not real, that it is simply a construct devised to help us differentiate between the present and our perception of the past. The 'block universe' theory, as their theory is called, can be summarized as follows. "The theory, which is backed up by Einstein’s theory of relativity, states that space and time are part of a four dimensional structure where everything that has happened has its own coordinates in spacetime" (Time is NOT real – Physicists show EVERYTHING happens at the same time | Science | News | Express.co.uk). In this theory, all our past experiences co-exist simultaneously with all our present and future experiences. If that is the case, there is no 'time', at least not as we define it. Stated in a different way: "Your birth is out there in space-time. Your death, too, is in space-time. Every moment of your life is out there, somewhere, in space-time. So says the block universe model of our world" (The block universe theory, where time travel is possible but time passing is an illusion - ABC News). What made the strongest impression upon me from the second article was reading that "Everything is relative: what is past to you, will be future to someone else. So if I travel back to the past I'm travelling to what is someone else's future. That means the past won't be any different, in kind, to the present."
My brain seems able to grasp these concepts, however briefly. But they are also confusing. The philosophy and science involved in these concepts can seem overwhelming. In the end, they are mysteries that may or may not be elucidated in my lifetime. I hope however that they will be. I also hope that one day there could be time travel between the coordinates in the block universe. How cool that would be, to be able to visit 'a past moment with loved ones who are now gone', or even in another context, visit a 'future you'. How that would come to pass is anyone's guess. I don't see it happening for several more centuries. And yet sci-fi writers have written about time travel for years. They could visualize the future, at least one they 'saw', and committed that vision to paper. We who exist now were the future to their present, but we are also the past to someone else. It makes sense, and then it doesn't. But I like the idea that all the constructs of time exist equally and simultaneously.
