I took the dogs for a walk today despite the snow still on the ground. Walking is good for the soul.
As I walked a jumble of thoughts swirled around in my mind. I get many good ideas while I wander the byways. I like the solitude, the chance to withdraw into your own world and listen to the rhythms of your heart.
I don’t know what got me to thinking about it, perhaps being out in the country side away from the hustle and bustle, perhaps the book I am reading: but I started to ponder the subjects of time and change.
I will write more extensively on this shortly. For now, I wanted to get you thinking.
I read in one of my favourite books “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci”, that a man in the 8th century AD, quite probably would be born, live out his life and die with in the sound of the church bells of his local village. More startling though was the idea that he probably did not know what year he was born in or what year or century he lived in. He would understand time with a vague sense tied to the position of the sun in the sky. He would never know time with the precision of our modern times. As I type this I can look down to the right hand corner of my screen, and see the time, or I can glance at the clock on the wall.
When you start to comprehend what life must have been like then you begin to understand the profound changes that the twentieth century has wrought. Time and change have evolved into a commanding presence, which would be alien to the 8th century man or woman.
Take the case of my mother who has reached her eightieth year. She grew up in England with a father who had a passion for walking the quaint country lanes that abounded back then. Her England no longer exists. While I am sure there are still country lanes, so many have been lost to the encroachment of cities and automobiles. In her eighty years, the world she grew up with is gone. Yet, a woman of the 8th century, the 9th, and the 10th would see hardly any change over the course of three hundred years of more. For the time-starved inhabitants of the modern world, this seems impossible.
As I walk, my mind was a jumble of all these thoughts. Why does time appear to speed up as we age? If we are in the fourth generation of day timers what will the fifth generation look like? What is the importance of finding a timeless zone in our modern world? How do you do that?
These are import considerations if, like me, you have a passion for finding a deeper more profound way of life. Questions like these gave birth to Beautiful Summer Morning. I will be walking these byways in the months ahead. I will report on my travels. I will chat about my discoveries.
Ultimately I hope to excite, and stimulate you to think more deeply about our world and thus find an inner core of calm amid the fury whirling all about.
Nick Grimshawe.
