We've been having a Doctor Who marathon this last couple weeks. For those of you who don't know what that television show is about, it's a British sci-fi series about a time traveler from another planet (who looks surprisingly human) who has human friends, and he can travel anywhere in time and space. They go on great adventures together, and in fact rarely go anywhere without having a great adventure--some more fun than others.
One of the problems that The Doctor's human companions have to deal with is "life after The Doctor." They become accustomed to traveling universes all over time, and to live back among humans who have no idea that there is life on other planets is their idea of a monotonous hell. To plod along living life one day at a time, with many days being mundane--how could anyone live like that? They don't understand how to readjust.
My job consists of many different little tasks, but the majority of time I spend copying and pasting information between programs. The end result is a fantastic conversion of important paper documents to the Internet for your viewing pleasure, so it's definitely all worth it--just boring at times. Today I was walking out of work after a particularly mind-blowingly boring afternoon, and had the sudden thought that I wished The Doctor would come sweep me away from this life and whisk me off to various new worlds. It's a time machine, right? I could come back to this exact moment?
Then I thought about the movie Click. It's an Adam Sandler movie about a man who gets a remote control that controls his life instead of his television. He realizes he can skip past all the dull parts of his life, and thinks he's won the lottery. But after a while, the remote control begins to learn his habits, and overrides his choices and soon his whole life is over and he has missed out on all the best things.
Would I really want that? Sure, it would be nice to visit another time and another place. Heck, I'd love to just visit next week and get some lottery numbers. But I know I wouldn't want to give it up, all that traveling. I'd keep going until I was too old to go anymore, and then come back to what? My family would have all grown old without me, my friends would be gone, my pets would be long gone, and I'd be all alone in the end. And I would have missed out on all of life's small joys, like finally realizing the fun and beauty of planting a flower bulb, or sitting on the porch listening to a soft thunderstorm and the rain patter. Sure, I'd love to skip past the snowy months, but then I'd miss out on the crystallized patterns on the windows.
So, I think, ultimately.... yes. Vacations can be wonderful, but in the end the best part of life is being at home with your loved ones, living each mundane little day as it comes. One. Day. At. A. Time.
I think Albert Einstein said: The purpose of time is so that everything doesn't happen all at once. Really quite clever if you put a few cells together on it. However, in my big book it says God Created the day, and He created the night. It says he separated them from one another, and He created the seasons. God created time. He lived outside of time before that, and it seems he created it for us to have reference points. It makes sense to me that the way He can be omnipresent is that He can step in and out of time at His will, and therefore be everywhen for everyone. Do not think you can even pass the neighborhood of this topic and not get a Dad type response of some sort. BTW this is not my only thought on the matter.
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