Tag Archives: time

Cold, dark universe

Take a half hour and watch TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time

The current theories about the future of the universe is that it will expand into vast, empty, cold darkness. Even before all this happens the universe will be a very lonely place with stars moving away so fast that our telescopes would not be able to see them. Of course the timeline for this happening is so unfathomably long it simply isn’t conceivable. How inconceivable?

Life will only be possible for this percentage of time of the universe’s existence:

This would be utterly depressing if the scale of time wasn’t so enormous. But on this scale, if I looked forward 1,000 generations, that too would be a blip in time, with almost no change in the universe described in this film happening yet. We have a lot more immediate concerns about humanity’s survival than the expansion and aging of the universe.

I wonder if our universe isn’t like a lonely atom in empty space… a simple speck in a multiverse of distant universes that are oblivious to the existence of other atom-like universes also floating in empty space. Maybe some universes are aware of each other, quantum entangled with each other, playing out inverse existences. And maybe they are all entangled, universe-particles in a cosmic wave, vibrating in every possible direction. Grab your surfboards, it’s time to surf the cosmos.

Press Pause

Ever wish life had a pause button… Wish that you could just pause the entire world and step away for a bit… then come back refreshed, and ready to deal with the day.

Just hit pause and go for a nap, catch up on email, take a long walk, add a half day to your weekend.

Would you rather a pause button or would you prefer a rewind option? Mess up an conversation with someone? Just rewind and try again. Maybe pause first, then rewind.

There are no dress rehearsals for life. No pause button. But we can still carve out time for the things we care about. We can find moments to pause; moments for pause.

If we don’t find those moments, then the days, the weeks, and even the years can disappear. We don’t have a pause button, but every day there are moments that we can seek out or extend. There are moments we can spend intentionally. Moments when we pause to think, to reflect, to laugh, to step away from being busy, so that the day doesn’t just get away from us.

We don’t have a pause button, but we do have reasons in the day to take pause.

If I could turn back time

My oldest daughter leaves for France this morning. She’s going to teach English for 8 months in two very small neighbouring towns on the west coast of Bordeaux. I’m so excited for her, especially since she was supposed to spend a semester abroad in her third year of university and that was cancelled due to the pandemic. She is finally getting the trip she was hoping for 2 years after planning to go. It will be a wonderful adventure for her.

When I did my first university degree, it was in International Development and I told myself, “I’m not going to consider this degree complete until I travel to a developing nation and experience what I’m studying.” That didn’t happen. I ended up spending two years working as a lifeguard, and coaching and playing water polo 6 or 7 days a week, then I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. I didn’t end up doing any major travel until about 18 years after graduation, when I went to live in China.

I live a pretty content life with very little I regret, but if I could turn back time and do one thing differently, I would have travelled more when I was younger. If I could give advice to a younger me, that’s the big thing I’d share… (well, that and buy Apple stocks😀).

I see some high school students excited to head to university and they know exactly what they want to do. To them I think, ‘go for it, good for you!’ But I also see kids that just don’t know what they want to do. For them I think, ‘take a year off!’ Still apply for university if you want, then differ for a year. In both cases, travel and see a bit of the world before settling down in a job.

I didn’t become a teacher until I was 30. I have told both of my kids, “If you finish your degree, travel for 2 years, work for a year, do a whole other degree, and then do a year’s work at something you really wanted to try before finally starting a career… you’d still be ahead of my timeline.” When I’m done my career, I will still have had close to 30 years as an educator. I tell my kids there is time for a career after you try doing a few things you really want to do. And who knows, maybe the adventures you go on lead to a career you truly love.

I’m lucky to have a family and a career that bring me joy, and I know that if I had travelled more, I might never have met my wife and had my two wonderful kids. So I still actually don’t regret the choices I’ve made. But looking back at my younger self, I’d say ‘travel more’ would be the advice I’d give if I could whisper to myself half a lifetime ago.

Playing with geometry

The image below is a blue cube octahedron with each triangular face forming a tetra-octa-tetra pattern coming out from the center.

This is a tetra-octa-tetra, with two yellow tetrahedrons on opposite sides of an octahedron:

I’m fascinated by these shapes thanks to my uncle, Joseph Truss, who has been playing with these shapes for decades, and who believes the fundamental building blocks of our universe is the tetrahedron. We live in a ‘Tetraverse’.

But the geometry he describes goes far beyond this. He intuitively understands the underlying structure of the universe through geometry in a way that mathematical physicists understand it through math.

Watch this 28 minute movie, Hacking Reality. It gets to some of the topics Joe and I discuss. I really think he’s on to something some of the smartest physicists in the world are still trying to figure out… but he’s done it purely by playing with geometry, and visually/intuitively making sense of how shapes are formed and come together.

Updating my profile picture

When you live it, you don’t see it. Maybe you feel it… we are all getting older. I had my photo taken for work recently and realized that I look quite a bit different from my online profile pictures I have been using.

The one on the left is not from too long ago (2018 or 2019), but long enough that I’m no longer that guy. More grey, higher hairline, a few deeper lines. These things are beyond my control.

What is within my control is that I’m fitter than that guy. He had about 15 unwanted pounds on him and yet weighed less than I do now. I’ve lost the unhealthy weight and added muscle.

I can’t stop time, and my face will show my age in the coming decade much more than it did in the past decade. I accept that. But I’m working on being Younger Next Year, and slowing down the ravages of time on my physical and mental health. Part of that is not pretending I’m something that I’m not… so a new profile picture is something I plan to do a bit more frequently than every 3-4 years.

Old friends

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen each other for months or years, when you connect with long-time friends both time and distance melt away. There is no awkward silence, no getting up to speed, the friendship just moves forward as if it was just yesterday that you last connected.

I don’t have many friends like this, but I cherish the ones that I have. They are my family, just not by blood. As I get older, I value these connections more… Maybe because they happen less frequently, maybe because I see how precious such friendships are. Moments spent with good lifelong friends are moments that accumulate to keep life feeling rich and fulfilled.

The trick is not to wait for special events to get you together. Find opportunities to meet, to holiday, to connect for no other reason than to be together. Special events don’t happen often enough, and while distance and time may disappear when you connect weather it has been a short or long time apart, the longer apart you spend, the less time you’ll have together. So, make the time for the friends that matter.

Filling time

Ever find yourself filling time rather than spending it? You have a task to do and you have two hours to do it in, and you get it done in 2 hours. If you had 1.5 hours, that’s how long it would have taken… and if you had 2.5 hours you might get it done in just under 3. While that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I think it makes the point.

We recently hired a company to help us with tidying and organizing our garage and basement storage. We floundered over a couple weeks figuring out what to throw away and how to organize things. Then when we were getting help that was costing us more the longer it took, we transformed our garage. It went from a dumping ground that got out of hand when we had to throw everything in there for our main floor renovation, to a fully useable space with organized shelves and clear, labelled bins. We didn’t even need to add more shelving than what was already there.

If we had to keep going on our own without help, I think that we would still be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic – moving things around in a disorganized garage that still looked like a disaster.

That’s an example where outside help got us through what needed to be done, but some of this filling time issue is more personal. For example, I haven’t been getting my morning routine done every morning. Sometimes I get to my workout later in the day. When I’m not on summer break, I wake up at 5:15, I write, meditate, and work out and I’m usually in the shower by 7am or shortly thereafter. But now my writing could take an hour and I could head to the basement for a workout that’s usually 20 minutes cardio and 20-25 minutes of weights and stretching, and turn it into well over an hour. However, I’m not doing more, I’m just procrastinating and stretching the time. I’m distracted by my phone. I’m taking very long breaks between sets. I’m doing a 10 min cooldown on a 20 min ride on my stationary bike.

Sometimes I just stretch the time I spend on things just because the time is available. I’m not spending time doing things, I’m filling the time available. While it’s nice to have the time to be able to do this, it does feel like I’m just wasting time… and time is a limited resource. The question is, if I didn’t just use my ’empty’ time up, what would I spend it on?

Moments in the day

Do you ever go through a day where every moment seems like you are getting ready for another moment?

You aren’t doing a morning workout, you are starting your day off with exercise. You aren’t working, you are checking things off your ‘To Do’ list so that you can get to the next item. You aren’t enjoying a meal, you are eating on the go because it’s lunch time and you know that you need to eat.

Take a moment… breath deeply… more than once… be still.

Now plan a moment in your day that is about that moment and that moment only:

A long hug.

A walk outside.

A phone call with a loved one, or a good friend.

A delicious snack.

A favourite song played just a little too loud with headphones.

A moment to breathe, to meditate, to fully appreciate your surroundings.

Take a moment, rather than just letting moment after moment slip away.

Nothing and Everything

The earth has been around for 4.55 billion years. Homo sapiens for about 200,000 years.

200,000/4,550,000,000 *100= 0.0043956043956

Humans have only been on earth for 0.0044% of the earth’s history. Or if you look at the age of the one universe, 13.78 billion years, humans have only existed for 0.00144% of all time.

For a little more perspective, a single 100 year life is lived for only 0.00000073% of all time. Insignificant. Our lives are not even a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the universe. Nothing.

Yet for us, it’s everything. It’s all we know. It’s all we have. It’s no wonder people want to believe in an afterlife… why, there simply has to be more… or so the thinking goes. But regardless of your beliefs, this life is unlikely to go past 100 years. Life is so short and fleeting. This begs the questions:

Are you passing time, or are you experiencing it?

Are you completing tasks or creating memories?

Are you treating life like it is nothing, or do you realize that, for you, it is everything?

Undoing the pandemic

It takes a long time to build a culture of a school community, and a relatively short time to undermine it. The pandemic has been a major dismantler of school culture.

Next year our Grade 12’s will only have had from September to March of their Grade 9 year in a normal pre-pandemic school. The new Grade 9’s will have experienced their last pre-pandemic school experience at the start of middle school in Grade 6.

So, next September instead of our Grade 9’s being invited into a new school culture that has been well established, they are entering a school culture that only the Grade 12’s have a vague memory of. They are entering a school culture designed by maintaining ever changing Covid-19 safety precautions.

Next school year will be a critical rebuilding year. This has a lot of promise if it’s done with thoughtful intentions. If next year starts with a ‘business as usual’ expectation, the post pandemic culture will feel more like the pandemic shaped the school. If the year starts with a sense of community building and fostering the culture you hope to see, the afterglow of the pandemic can fade rather quickly.

Cultures don’t rebuild themselves.

So what about your school do you miss? How do you get it back?

What about your school has changed positively? How do you keep these things?

What can you do to start rebuilding in June rather than waiting until September?

If these things aren’t talked about intentionally, if they are not shared by staff and students, the effects of the pandemic on your school culture might linger for a long time. Either intentionally build the culture, or accept what is built out of the ashes of a 2.5 year disruption to what your school culture used to be like. Because whatever your school culture was back in January of 2020 is highly unlikely to be rebuilt by itself in September of 2022.