Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

We are all Today Years old.

Illogical Concept

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Age is a funny concept, isn’t it?

A tree has young twigs that stem from older branches which stem from the even older trunk and roots. But a tree is only one age, isn’t it?

Some parts of a tree may be newer than other parts, but they are all presently, ultimately, just the tree. And the tree is today years old.

We are all today years old. All of life is today years old and tomorrow, it’ll all be older. We all will be. Life is always the oldest it has ever been, and so are we.

But change doesn’t age. Nor does it live in the past or future. Change is simply the persistent newness, the four-dimensional topography, the algorithmic geometry, of the present. It’s smaller twigs and big branches. It doesn’t exist anywhere, but here, right now.

Sure, you may use that clever brain of yours with it’s capacity for abstraction, and you may deduce a linear causality to explain why something is the way it is, but can you point to something that is in the past? Can you offer some object the exhibits the quality of being past or even future?

Of course not. All “things” are present, only. These pasts and futures exist in your imagination, only. And it’s funny that we even bother with pasts and futures when there is such overwhelming complexity all around us and even including ourselves. Just an ocean of particles, interacting and assembling into stuff that assembles into more stuff, all in real-time.

A quote from Alan Watts:

…”Some people will use a symbolism of the relationship of God to the universe, wherein God is a brilliant light, only somehow veiled, hiding underneath all these forms as you look around you. So far so good. But the truth is funnier than that, it is that you are looking right at the brilliant light now, that the experience you are having that you call ordinary everyday consciousness — pretending you’re not it — that experience is exactly the same thing as ‘IT’! There’s no difference at all, and when you find that out, you laugh yourself silly. That’s the great discovery.”

If you ever want to know what time it really is, it’s right now. The newest time. The oldest time.

Just like you are always the newest you and the oldest you.

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