The passing of time is closely related to the concept of space. Because we all exist and are moving through this physical world, time is how we measure the amount of activities one has done in a certain increment.
There was a particular school project where the group of kids had to write essays. Perhaps the essays were based upon the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” After all of them wrote their essays, they put them in a plastic bag; then they put that bag into a ceramic jar and buried it underground. A tree was planted as a reminder of where they buried the jar. The idea behind this project was for all of the classmates to reunite again after10 years. They would dig up this time-capsule and compare their dreams with how they’d grown up. Perhaps they would reminisce about the good ole days. Who knows, some of them might have become a president of a major corporation, such as a millionaire tycoon who likes to say “you‘re fired,“ or famous bandit like D.B. Cooper. While on one hand I chuckled at its naïve sentimentality, their project captured the essence of time. Those essays were their scrapbook, a reminder of how they once were.
There is a Japanese folk tale called, Urashima. Urashima was a fisherman. One day he rescued a turtle which was being bullied by kids at the seashore. In return for the favor, the turtle invited him to come to an undersea kingdom. Urashima enjoyed his stay in the kingdom and even married a sea princess; then he realized he left an elderly father and mother back home. He confessed to then wife/sea princess that he needed to go back home to his folks. In his mind, this had only been a few days. The sea princess gave Urashima a treasure box as a token of her affection, only she told him never to open it under any circumstances.
He returned to shore but found that a stranger lived in his house. Urashima told the stranger that the house belonged him. The stranger, not realizing who he was talking to, told him that the house was once belonged to Urashima but that was hundreds of years ago. He tried to convince to the stranger he is that Urashima, but the story was too bizarre to believe. Saddened and confused by the revelation, Urashima broke his promise and opened the treasure box given by the sea princess. Smoke came out from the box engulfed Urashima and turned him from healthy young man into shriveled old man; then he collapsed and died.
This is a peculiar story to say the least. The idea of meeting with talking turtle is strange enough, but marrying a non-human sea princess boggles my mind. However this is a folk tale which usually tells us lesson. If there are any lessons here, they may be about justice, obedience, and being loyal, but more than anything, I was interested in the sequence and concept of time in this story. Because the origin of this folk tale is in the far east, the idea of time was a completely different concept than it is in the west. It seems that impermanence is much more valued in Japanese culture, what one does in the present moment has great value. You can find out more on this concept of time from The Japanese Attitude Toward Time, by Hajime Nakamura
There is a dilemma in this story. One reality which doesn’t have any increment of time the time in which Urashima spent in the undersea kingdom. The other time was on the shore. It seems that the tragic ending was inevitable. The Judeo-Christian concept of time is linear. It’s physically impossible to be in two places at the same time. If we spend time physically in a particular space, there is no way we can relive it and make changes.
The book of Ecclesiastes clearly shows how everything has its time. It compares and contrasts activities and says that there are times for each of these things, not both events at the same time. It illustrates for us why life can’t always seem fair. Time defines the very nature of who we are as finite beings. God is infinite and sees all at the same time: past, present, and future.
