We Are All Time-Travelers
[This is a post for The Time-Traveler’s Wife Summer Read-Along – please add your link to your Summer Read-Along post in the box below, leave comments and join in the conversation!]
The whole concept behind The Time-Traveler’s Wife has always fascinated me. To have the ability to move forward and backwards in time is a common trope of science fiction, but the focus on moving back and forth along your own time-line was new to me. The way in which Henry is compelled to revisit certain points in his past over and over again strikes me as simultaneously a blessing and a curse.
I think this is probably most obvious in the chapter where he is telling Clare about the death of his mother. As Henry himself confirms, ‘One of the best and most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.’ In his visits to his own past, he receives the gift of reconnecting with someone who no longer exists in the physical realm of here and now.
But the part of this chapter which really resonates with me is the fact that he continually returns again and again to the scene of the car accident where his mother died. He explains his theory of why he finds himself repeatedly returning to this moment in time by comparing it to gravitational force. He says, ‘You know about gravity, right? The larger something is, the more mass it has, the more gravitational pull it exerts? It pulls smaller things to it, and they orbit around and around… My mother dying… it’s the pivotal thing… everything else goes around and around it.’
When I read that chapter, it really hit home that we are, in actual fact, all time-travelers. We constantly travel along our own timeline. We find ourselves worrying about the future, whether that’s something as minor as what you’re going to make for dinner that evening, or as major as fears for our children, big financial concerns and health issues. We also find ourselves fantasizing about the future too – you know, things like what you’ll do if the lottery ticket you just purchased from the corner shop turns out to be the lucky one. Or looking forward to our summer holiday at the beach. Or when we get excited about a coming event, a concert, a birthday, a day-trip.
However, we, like Henry, are far more inclined to visit the past than we are the future. Our memories of places lived, people met, events experienced hold onto our consciousness with a tight grip. And, also like Henry, we all have those memories that have greater gravitational pull than others – memories that we find ourselves recalling time and time and time again. We allow them to inform our understanding of the world and of ourselves. We build our identity around them. In fact, we give them the power to stake our identity to the ground, meaning we can now only pivot around this central point.
Henry asks, ‘Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell?’ And I find myself searching the answer to that question too. Is there? Maybe the answer can be found in meditation? Or in Yoga? Or maybe it is simply through the act of cultivating presence. Perhaps I could bring this quality into the practice of living my everyday life. I’m all to aware that it can never be a permanent state, and nor would I ever want it to be. But I think striving towards an experience of the present is to strive towards a personal sense of peace – a worthy goal, for certain.
So yes, in that sense we are all time-travelers – destined ever to travel back and forth along our own timeline, struggling to stay in the present.
I want to leave you with a beautiful poem by Samantha, which I read over on Danielle La Porte’s site yesterday. When I read it I just thought it was so incredibly appropriate to these issues I’d been considering in relation to The Time-Traveler’s Wife – I knew that I had to share it with you. Don’t forget to add the link to your own Summer-Read-Along post and join in the conversation in the comments box!
THE PRESENT
The present
paper thin
be careful
it is dissolving
as you read this
new moments
erupt under your feet
fill each one
with awareness
witness
your heart beats
can you believe it
your body coaxes
you onward
constantly
utter faith
that you will
spend the offering
of life
wisely.
10 Comments
Rachel @ Suburban Yogini
Gorgeous Amy and so true. Trying not to travel my own timeline on a continuous basis is one of my big life journeys!
Annabel
That poem just made me cry! Beautiful. And yes, very apt.
I bought this book when it first came out, with the intention of reading it soon after. However, for some reason, I never did – I read other things, I put it on my bedside table and eventually, it ended up at the bottom of that particular pile. When I finished other books I sometimes picked it up and thought about reading it but always read something else instead. In the end, it moved from my bedside table to the book shelf, unread, and there it has remained.
In the last couple of years, I have heard uncomplimentary things about this book and it has stayed on the shelf. Even though I never give reviews etc.. any truck and am never influenced by them in terms of choosing which books to read, I have allowed myself not to read this book.
The world is a funny old place and I believe that it throws stuff your way just at the right moment. That book has been patiently sitting on my shelf all this time, no doubt with the knowledge that it was just a matter of….well, time! I saw your summer reading idea and realised that it wasn’t that I had no interest in this book or that it didn’t appeal to me, but that actually, there was something about it that I was resisting – that was when I knew I had to read it! And I was right: I did that thing of reading the first few pages through half-closed eyes and with a bit of a sour look on my face but then….p.11 and I was hooked! Then came the part where Henry goes and takes the child Henry round the museum. I was not expecting the time travelling to include being with oneself at a different age and, to be honest, that was it – I was a mess! The idea of the adult self being able to go back in time and be kind and loving to the child self was very hard for me, but also rather beautiful and I think she somehow managed to pull that off without resorting to sentimentality. I think it’s one of those moments that we have with books sometimes – a moment that I’ll always remember.
So, thank you Amy for coming along just at the right moment. I am on an ever-continuing journey of self-awareness and this keys right into it.
Funnily enough, I have just started writing a novel that has a split narrative with a time difference of 82 years, so I’m also regarding this read as ‘research’!
Annabel. xx
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Julie
Thanks Amy!
This present. How much peace it brings. x
Dryad_wombat
I am speechless. I was reaching out for this idea tonight, trying to articulate it, and here it is. thank you!
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Joanna Paterson
Hi Amy, I’ve just added my first contribution – I wasn’t sure I’d blog my responses but found that I could make some unexpected connections from time travel to blogging! I have something else on past, present and future in landscapes that I’m going to write about tomorrow, also in response to these themes, on my other site. Thanks for much food for thought – I’m looking forward to the next instalment 🙂
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Joanna Paterson
Took me a bit longer than I thought to write the second part… that’s Edinburgh gallivanting for you!
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