Recently I discovered that my automobile’s driver-side window was actually a time portal. I was just minding my own business and enjoying the bright, crisp spring day as I drove along. The sun shining through my sport utility’s windshield, warm and enveloping, soon nudging and then insisting with its heat to open the window. As my driver-side window lowered and I felt a cool breeze rush into my car – FWAP! It happened. I was transported to a different time and place in a vivid flashback.

And when the temporal rift returned me in that split-instant back to the here and now, the already bright green spring vegetation that passed by as I drove seemed to almost  pulse and even glow with vibrancy. The day itself was like the contrast button in life’s photo editing program had been pushed to “Max” level. There are times when we have moments like that. You hit the winning pitch in a baseball game and years later you  remember every detail like it really was yesterday, even how the ball seemed to hang in  the air in slow motion as you hit it and how the “CRACK” sound made by the bat lurched  things back into real time. Or when a car crash happens and the apple that was sitting in the front seat now levitates in mid-air before it, you, and everything else go into fast-forward motion.

Sometimes a similar moment triggers instant time travel. Other times it is a taste or a smell. Once I asked an old man what was a smell that he remembered most from all of his years of living. His reply was the smell of freshly cleaned laundry, just off of the clothesline, that his mother did every Thursday – with the last time being 65 years ago.  I still remember the sharp, crisp apple that I shared with my toddler son years ago, sitting on the kitchen floor after playing with toys. The taste of that apple helps me relive a moment that will never exist again. Or will it? Is there a way to consciously bend time? To time travel back to another moment and place and relive it?

I believe you can travel back in time, and even influence its flow, but you have to pay close attention. Concentrate. Want it. Most people aren’t aware of their environment and what happens around them. It is a gift for those that regularly do notice. People are distracted with thoughts, in a hurry or can only deal with so much happening to be able to perceive more. It is in a mindset of perception, that state of being, which gives the focus we need to bend time.
The more formal term is “mindfullness”. Something that has its roots in Buddhism but is also a universal concept. I think in its simplest form, mindfulness is being able to fully live in the present moment. But how can being in the moment help you time travel? Most people live in the past or the future, but often not in the present. For some, the best moment of their lives was being the high school quarterback during that one game or regretting that they never asked that person across a room out for a date. Living in the future, so many worry about if they can afford the new car they want or if they will grow old well. And the price is being focused somewhere else than in the present.  Without being fully in the moment, soaking in every detail, how can we re-experience it except through narrow conclusions? By actually living in the moment, perceiving the colors, the smells, soaking it in without fudging it, we can capture more of it to relive later. But I don’t think you need to be a guru or Jedi master to have this perceptive power.

I think at the heart of it all, time travel is about slowing things down. When we enjoy a good sunset or a vista along a trail, we naturally “soak it all in” by breathing a little slower, a little deeper. By breathing slower, we naturally go into more of a meditative state, helping everything else to focus better. The mind naturally starts to clear a little. Deliberately not thinking and trying to listen to what we hear and see, the mind clears a little more. To our amazement, you start to hear far-off sounds. If hiking on a trail, you might actually think you can hear your beating heart! By trying to use our senses more and thoughts less, our brain can take in the raw sensations. Add to that the powerful sense of touch, taste, and smell. Feeling the soft moss along a stream or the smoothness of a baby’s skin. Savoring the frosting on your tongue or the smell of your lover’s hair. Don’t try to use words or thoughts, just see how much you can notice. Just “be”.

Part of not using words, thinking about what something means or trying to describe that sunset with a color, is to set your expectations. Actually, I think the trick is to have no expectations. So many times we focus on an aspect of an event we think is important. But that narrower focus limits what else might be noticed. What would happen if we just stand still and watch what happens around us and whatever does happen we will watch as much as we can? If we start into a situation looking for anything to happen, then something amazing might unfold that we would not have otherwise noticed. Maybe then we see the same basketball play that won the close game, but also notice the wonder on a boy’s face as he watches the same play? When I am at events, I try to notice also look for what any children present may see. They know how to observe and take it all in – they are the best time travelers, noticing wonder as a normal thing.

Trying to time shift, slow things down, really experience the here and now, isn’t just for trying to remember and relive the past. The past is actually gone as soon as it happens, eager to rob the present and future of its due. By time traveling to the past and reliving its sensations, joys, and biting memories, we better tie together our world into a cohesive whole. It helps us to understand better those things that we chose to remember and make part of us. We maybe see a little better who we are and that the past, present, and future can all live together and not in the separate boxes we strive to contain them in.

My time portal one sunny morning transported me for an instant back to a younger and thinner me, driving a jacked-up orange Ford F-150 service truck. It smelled or dust and gasoline, with parts rattling in the back for various farm machinery, I was driving over country roads again. The speed was disastrous and I was invincible. The windows were down and crisp morning air enveloped my arm perched on the open window. I was racing to a farm field to help my father fix a tractor that had broken down. Those days were care-free, but I had my first taste of independence and purpose. Everything seemed to be alive. The grassy rangeland I passed was vibrant with its purple tufts of buffalo grass. The morning dew, rising up in the air, gave the smell of minerals and earth. The already tall wheat in other fields was starting to ripen to a golden hue, waving hello in the slight breeze.

In hectic days of enduring daily commutes to work in heavy traffic, answering telephones and emails, organizing schedules, only to rush home, we often become lost in it all. But then all it can take is an unexpected memory – a momentary time travel – to help us remember another time. Another place and  fond memory, as if we were there again or at least just for a moment. But we have to watch for it, to be open to it, happening.

– Mason