Most of us think of time the same way. Like a highway - with a beginning behind us and an end somewhere up ahead. We’re born at one end and die at the other. Everything in between these bookended, universal experiences goes in one direction.
It seems intrinsic, this natural picture of time. The truth that we live every day. We wake up in the morning – that’s the beginning of the day – and go to sleep at the end. A reliable rhythm.
Then I’ll travel or meet a careseeker from another culture who reminds me that this idea of time is just that. An idea. And it’s one that not everyone shares. Our American or European-descended idea of time isn’t the law of the universe. Plenty of people, across plenty of centuries, looked at time and saw something completely different.
I can’t help but think about how much this highway or arrow-shaped idea governs the way we talk about dying. We speak of someone “running out of time,” or a life “cut short,” or the end “approaching.” Like we’re driving a car so…
