ZenVeg and Other Nonsense

Time Traveling

I was watching Outlander, Season 5. This is the ultimate time-traveling story that starts off in a dual Scotland/Boston setting. Later in the series, our Scots wind up in the America story, specifically North Carolina. The main character, Jamie has hidden a black man, the beloved servant, in a cabin in the woods because he has killed the would-be assassin of Jamie’s Aunt. Then, as now, the black man would be hard pressed to survive judicial review. The man in the woods utters these words on one very lonely, melancholy day.

“My own thoughts are but poor company.”

We know that all too well.

I often think, as this world burns around the fringes, that it would be a welcome event to live through a hurricane/tornado/ tsunami event and just wake up on an island 8,000 miles from here. The Tom Hanks adventure in Cast Away is a bit much. Maybe Gilligan’s Island is too contrived. Ian, in Outlander spends a couple of years with a Native Indian tribe. He had the markings on his face, and he embraced their ways, almost forgetting his Scottish roots.

How bad could it be to just float up away from this MAGA nonsense, this Trump Tragedy and wake up on the island of Guam, or The Marianas, or Greenland? Plop. Close your eyes and click your heels like Dorothy and poof…we are somewhere else. Even our American territories are exotic enough to grasp our attention and put us in survival mode. At least we wouldn’t be thinking about Trump and Bondi and Miller’s nonsense.

It would be quite the respite to just be somewhere else, with no power to return…just yet. We find ourselves in a deep, deep, coma like sleep. We wake, we flutter our eyelids, we move through this new time and place like we are swimming in molasses. Slowly, we regain our eyesight, our hearing, our tactile senses, and then the brain kicks in. We are on a tropical, isolated island. Or we are in a Welsh valley with scrubby trees and craggy cliffs. Or we are in the Amazon, the un-touched parts, just a mile away from an Indigenous tribe that eventually invites us in and gives us coconut soup.

There is no social media to distract; only survival and the challenge to be very agile in this new, scary, exciting environment. Clare did it on Outlander. She grew to flourish in the Scottish highlands, then North Carolina 200 years ago. There is a scene where she and her daughter Brianne are frolicking on an unspoiled ocean beach. Because Clare has time-traveled, she thoroughly appreciates the virginity of that sandy beach. (spoiler alert, the scenes were filmed in Scotland, not NC.)

Our dreams are small journeys of time travel. We often dream of times, places, people from long ago. The best dreams are from days when I am 9 or 10. Not because there was an overflowing bucket of lovely childhood memories, no, simply I wish to have that body spry feeling. Those were days when I could fly off of the swing and roll, jump off of tall log piles and land like a cat, somersault all down my vast front yard. I could climb many trees and play 6 hours a day of softball with the neighborhood boys. I could do gymnastics at the YMCA and can remember just how freeing it feels to simply bounce up and down on a trampoline. The spring, the view, the give of the mat, then an even more forceful jump, springing even higher. I so miss the agile, flexible, split-doing, cartwheeling body. That is the time-traveling feature I want. No stiff hips, clicking shoulders, pins, and needles here and there. I need body flow. Soft, pain-free, rhythmic movement. I have grown tired of turning my ankle just by walking over a tree root; tired of being tired too early in the day. I want body flow.

Even time-traveling back 17 years when we bought the ZenVeg Estate seems like an eternity. The climate has changed remarkedly, the dry spells are more severe and when the rains come, it seems to be for days on end. What used to be reliable spring crops go into puberty suddenly, then burst into flower. My greens are going to be Autumn/Winter fare from now on. My potatoes that go in as a late summer crop do remarkably well, so I’ve split my crop this year to compare and contrast the Spring/Autumn contest of the taters.

I think about how time-travel stories dwell on how history could be alarmingly altered (Back to the Future style). I told my therapist that I get into loops where I wonder what I would be like with a different Mother. I often wonder if someone like Tamara Levitt, the voice behind the Calm.com meditations had raised me. She asked me to figure out what I was seeking as a different outcome and work toward that anyway. She’s no fun! Spoiler alert, Tamara, for all her soothing, current persona was not gifted a serene existence. Per Wikipedia:

“Around age 12, she began a professional stage career, singing and acting. However, by the time she was 14, she had developed anxiety, depression and an eating disorder,^[5][8] and described herself as "an angry punk rocker" whose childhood "wasn't an easy one".

Her tribulations were with her father. It is still an interesting fantasy. Who would any of us be if there was one or two variables in our parentage? Or if we were raised in a small rural town rather than a suburb? Or if we were born with dwarfism, or deaf or intersex? These wonderings build empathy and curiosity.

Even Monk turned Coach Jay Shetty embraces a time-travel mindset. From his Weekly Wisdom newsletter:

Try This: Fast forward from where you are right now. Look at your life in 20 years. If you keep living the way you do now, what will that look like?

Now, ask yourself: is that where you want to be?

If the answer is yes, amazing! Keep it up!

If your answer is no, then you need to find a new path.

But there is a catch and even Jay has succumbed. That new path he wants you try comes with a hefty fee from any number of the Executive Coaches who have captured us with their new feels. I’m guilty as well. Have a ton of self-help books laying around. My true observation is that billions of people have found contentment, and various levels of success, failure, joy, sorrow, and an acceptance of life all on their own. Perhaps our societies’ leaders and celebrities did employ the mentors, tutors, or coaches that helped them become the Tiger Woods, the Vanessa Williams, the Carrie Underwoods, the Barak Obamas of the world. Many, however, emerged on their own falling and tumbling and getting back up. Yes, there are villages and tribes and unexpected teachers showing up for many through their endeavors. There are unassuming memes on Social Media that catch our fancy: From Tiny Buddha…

Anxiety is often a reaction to living too far in the future. Come back to now—where your feet are, where your breath is, where your power lives.

This time traveling, what us anxious folks call “catastrophizing” is not useful, or pleasant or worth our energies. Try instead to reach back to some delicious, joyful memory from a better time, or create some future fiction where you picture the weather, the setting, the smells coming from the kitchen, the sounds of a thunderstorm or the gentle tweeting of the crickets. Picture yourself on a float on a calm lake with bathwater warm ripples that lure you into a deep meditation. The birds are serenading and magically, there are no mosquitos or pesky bugs. Only the frogs and a sweet family of otters are sharing your aquatic space.

My recent Yurt fantasy is where I continue to go when I need a bit of time travel. Where will you go today? Go backwards, go forwards, go to infinity, just choose a pleasing narrative that soothes your soul and makes you smile. May your thoughts be pleasant company.