Time is a very funky concept. It is so etched into our lives and our reality yet it has been reduced by us merely down to the past yesterday and coming tomorrow. We have simplified it to such a degree that we have forgotten what a German scientist once taught us; that it is a dimension.
There is no doubt in the fact that we, as humans, perceive time linearly. To us, yesterday is a past we have been through but cannot go back to. Tomorrow is a coming truth that we have yet to experience and know nothing about. Coming back to what Einstein said, time is also a dimension.
Since time is a dimension, just like space, it is also travellable! Nowhere is it explained as clearly as it has been in Chris Nolan’s Interstellar, where the concept of wormholes in time is explained with a sheet of paper and a pencil.
Imagine time to be that sheet of paper that is linear and through which you are, as well as everything else, traveling towards your eventual demise. What would happen if a giant comes along and folds that celestial sheet of paper in half? Spots that were on that sheet would come in contact with spots that exist just as far as they do from the line of the fold in the middle. Thus, in all likelihood, events closer to the middle would be facing a past or present closer to them in time as compared to the ends of that sheet which would see wormholes leading to enormous jumps in time spanning millennia.
Why am I dropping all this time-lore on you all of a sudden? Don’t worry, you won’t be quizzed on it later. My only intention behind that is to get you to understand time for what it is; a dimension.
We experience the third dimension the way we do because we live and move around in it. We also live within the dimension of time, but moving around in that aspect is way harder because it requires special speeds and insane amounts of gravity. So, we are stuck within the limits of our human bodies and the atmosphere of our planet.
But what if we had the ability to run at the speed of light and jump to planets with levels of gravity way higher than that of planet Earth? Well, if you were to ever become capable of doing that, nothing would come between you and your ambitions of traversing time! The birth of Christ and the invention of flying cars would be no farther to you than your local pharmacy or the public swimming pool.
Events adorn the dimension of time in the form of landmarks just how the buildings do on your roads. The big bang is the Eiffel Tower of dimension time and you missing the bus to work merely a bush by the side of a road.
Now comes the part when I begin throwing curveballs at you.
If so is the case and time really is travelable with events posing as landmarks on it, doesn’t that set all our destinies in stone? Doesn’t that mean that all our futures are fixed? It doesn’t matter what I choose to do now, my actions have already been written by God in His book of destiny?
Do not be fooled, because God has indeed communicated to us the blessing he has bestowed in the form of free will. Confusing, isn’t it? Let me try to help.
There are two ways that this issue can be visualized.
First comes the concept of destiny of different types. In large, the destiny of the world or the destiny of a nation are such that no individual can influence them in any capacity. These are destinies only God can touch and drive towards whatever ends He prefers. Then comes the destiny of an individual. Within this convoluted web of destinies woven on top of each other, the meager man has been granted the ability to pull his own string in a slightly different direction still acting within that larger mess of webs laid out by God.
So, humans can change their destinies based on their understanding of right and wrong. But, their capacity has been limited because all these decisions exist not outside of what God has already planned out for that man but well in it.
That was one way to explain it, the other revolves around time. This explanation is merely a theory talked about by many because it appeases common sense but it isn’t backed by any research no matter scientific or theological.
You might have heard this one before, but time is round. It’s like a circle, not a linear sheet. You chose to eat bread instead of cereal last Saturday. That decision of yours exists somewhere on that circle of time near the 2000 A.D. mark. Since you made that decision in the past, it exists behind you. But at the same time, there is no doubt that it also exists in your front because time is a circle. The same way, your choice of breakfast for tomorrow morning is a decision you are yet to make but one that has already been made. God knew what your free will was going to get you to choose so he set that in stone even before you were born. You are only traveling through that circle of time making that decision in your present but since time is a circle as well as a dimension, that decision of yours was drawn out when time itself was created.
I know, it’s a bit too much to swallow at once.
To God, both the end of time and the big bang are events taking place at the same time only at different ends. He sees all the decisions we are yet to make as already done.
Alongside all of that stands valid the fact that destiny is prone to change! With prayers we humans can divert catastrophes as well as seek forgiveness to turn towards God for good. So while everything that was bound to happen has happened, we can still change the design of that map through our actions. That is the blessing of free will.
This concept is as hard to understand as the status of God Himself. Whenever the human mind goes to think of a being outside of all dimensions, we just can’t. That’s where the limitations of the human brain appear. In the same way, we can only attempt to disfigure the concept of time and free will to try to fit them into the human understanding because it’s impossible to actually comprehend them in all their reality while still relying on the human mind to do the comprehending.
متعلقہ
کتاب و شتاب کا مکالمہ، از ، انعم قریشی۔ پاکستان
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