I think a lot about the passage of time. About how the past and future each have histories of their own. The sun used to revolve around the Earth, until we learned otherwise. “What will the future be like”, too, is a picture that keeps changing according to the sensibilities of our time.

I idly wonder. People have histories. What if histories were people? The past, like the future, grows alongside humanity, learning, flailing, fumbling towards something.

It gets messier – because even in the present moment, there are many pasts and many futures. Many different stories for us to choose from, many different meanings. Many are equally valid. It’s tough enough to choose a Netflix show to watch over dinner, how do you choose an entire model of reality?

It sometimes astounds me that people don’t seem to be overwhelmed by this all the time. Why aren’t we all flooding the streets, asking one another, “What do you know? What do you believe? What is true? How do you know it? How are you sure? How is doubt to be managed?” I get it though, life is hard and tiring and most people are too busy struggling to get by to ask if they should be revising their entire worldview.

But also – people do care about these things! That’s why people seek out gurus and pastors and spiritual leaders and whatnot. Wise elders are everywhere, patiently waiting for you to reach out to them.

What seems harder to find – and maybe I’m just not looking in the right places – are co-conspirators. Fellow pilgrims, not in search of a map to be handed to them from an authority, but a compass, an inner voice.

Alan Watts had this great bit about how there are two kinds of mystics or holy men. The first is the man of the cloth. He gets his wisdom from an institution. A church, a cathedral, an organization, a hierarchy. A brotherhood, an order. He learns rituals and traditions, and sits for examinations.

The second is a man of the wilderness. The Shaman. Nature is his church. He goes alone into the desert, into the forest, into the silence, into the darkness. There, away from the bustle and jostle of everyday life, he forgets his name and rediscovers that he is one with all things.

Different strokes for different folks, huh?

Ever since I first caught a glimpse of this perspective, I’ve known that something about it “wants me”. I don’t know how to talk about it without sounding a little silly and kooky – except maybe to say that life itself is pretty silly and kooky. Something in my deep subconscious is pulling me towards an entirely different life-configuration. I keep trying to ignore it, postpone it. A shabbily disguised messenger of Eternity shows up at my door from time to time and I pretend I’m not home.

Remind me later, Universe. I’m kind of busy at the moment.