A Birthday Celebrant’s Meditation on Time’s Relativity and Related Matters
by Ka Charlie (Charles R. Avila)
The Gardener’s Tales, 24 April 2025
When Papa was my age he was five years gone and, six years later, when Mama was my age she was in her last year before passing on, at eighty-one.
Both lived quite a full life. When I mention them now I almost feel like a little boy again but, truth be told, I became a great grandfather last year.
So, I am reminded to ask the universe how many more years she’s got for me. Is there ever enough time to reach life’s goals? Or, must life have goals and achievements [dear ones loved, people served, revolutions waged, books written, trees planted, movements launched, protecting our house of life, exploring the whole cosmos, inter alia]? Finding meaning might suffice.
For a while now I’ve seen that I am fast sliding into eighty (four score) even while thankfully feeling strong and generally healthy. [Oh, I’ve had my heart attacks and multiple strokes and double pneumonias and Covid – honestly, though maybe not obviously.]
Today one might ask how old you think you are: the question is correctly phrased because you only know the time and date of your birth on the testimony of others, not of your own personal knowledge and awareness.
The most you can be sure of is that you were there at your birthday.
But was that your real beginning?
Learned people are not always in full agreement on many things. When did you start to be – when your father’s sperm penetrated your mother’s egg? – That very moment? Three months later? Or even months afterward? Or when at last you got out of your mother’s womb, all bloody, messy and helpless.
But were we not there – to use the words of Jesus, St. John and St. Paul – “before the foundation of the world?”
What is your earliest memory – when you were two or three years old? Isn’t it only on the authority of others’ testimony that we believe, correctly, that we are older than we can re-member?
Actually, then, on the basis of others’ testimony, such as the discoveries by recent scholars, we may have to accept that what we are or the elements that make up what we are – what you are, what I am – are not new, not recent but billions of years old.
They were not made on Earth or by Earth but in the womb of exploding stars. This is the real stuff – the particles that make up what you are. Yes, accept it or not, you are much older than you think because what you are is much older than you realize.
So, strictly speaking, whether you were young-once or you are one of the young ones now, you and I are not that young.
You and I are not as young as we habitually claim to be because the particles that constitute the being that you are or that I am – you and I – are more than thirteen thousand seven hundred million years old.
Yes, this is true although we are not quite aware of it. So, I say it again: you only know this not of your own personal knowledge and awareness but on the authority of others’ testimony and studies: that you and I are older than we can remember.
I have been reflecting, philosophically if you wish, with my friend Raymun J. Festin, SVD, through his many books of late.
True, the human species has been around a bit but the identifiable human body that I am or you are, the bearer of my personal identity or yours, has a lifespan that is quite brief and narrow (“vita brevis”).
So, Ray says that’s why grandparents are fond of their grandchildren because they somehow see their “selves” in them and feel that unspoken satisfaction that they will continue to “exist” in the future in some form or fashion. Because of these grandchildren “I shall not wholly die” [“Non omnis moriar.”]
I got to thinking now how I, a great grandfather, felt like a little boy earlier. Why is this so?
Isn’t it because I’ve always been aware that I have continuously been the same person over the years, for 80 years now, and that I have been the same person to others who know me? The little boy, the teenager, the young and the older adult are the same identical person, for sure.
How was this possible? It’s funny, perhaps, because the real reason for this personal identity is my having the body that I have. Funny, I said, because that same body has not remained the same, but has always been changing, and so much, so fast. And yet it is the evidence of my identity or my being a continuant entity.
I re-view the mental photographs of me at 8, at 18, all the way to 78 years old, and the undeniable fact is “change.” But equally undeniable is that, through all the changes, it is the same “me”.
Isn’t my body everything in life? Isn’t it the arena on which my very existence unfolds and rolls along?
Isn’t the daily grind of eking out a decent living carried out precisely to sustain the biological survival of my body including, admittedly, all its non-bodily needs and necessities – psychological, moral, intellectual and spiritual?
And yet it is this body which is changing all the time that evidences my unique, unrepeatable personal identity.
Okay, I am now being warned of the onslaught of “cruel old age” and the “totalitarian tyranny of time.”
Time comes quickly. It goes quickly. And once gone, it is gone forever.
Or is it, really? It does seem so.
A Trappist author (Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.) visited the cemetery and, after a kind of “conversation with the inhabitants,” reported that time is like a “commodity” they ran out of in their lifetime and they now crave more of but impossibly.
“Give me time,” the frustrated ambitious begged him, “and I’ll garner wealth, I’ll achieve position, I’ll win power.”
“Give me time,” the explorer begged, “and I’ll really discover!”
“Give me time,” the artist and the author cried, “and I’ll produce a masterpiece!”
“Give me time,” the teacher said, “and I’ll develop intellects! I’ll produce character!”
“Give us time,” the sick cried, “and we shall get well!”
“Give me time,” the wanton pleaded, “and I’ll live aright!”
In sum, the Trappist said: What wouldn’t many of the dead in the nearest graveyard give for a day, an hour, a split second of time?
What wouldn’t Dives, the rich man in the Gospel, give for a moment of time; or that wealthy landlord to whom Christ said: “You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you.”
Yet, both they and we (said the Trappist) have all the time in the world! Actually! We have all the time in the world for we have NOW – this present, ever pressing, and ever passing moment – and in this world of space-time, that is all the time there is, or ever will be.
How scary, how challenging and how exciting to be sliding into eighty!
I am now at that point where so many years of the 20th and 21st centuries no longer exist. They are the years of my history. Current and future generations will little know nor long remember the times that laid the foundations for their present time: no matter, or as Rizal put it, “nada importa.”
But, as always, my time is NOW – this “nunc fluens” or ever-passing moment. It is all the time I have. It is all the time we are ever going to have. I am thinking of this as I slide into eighty.
So, I must seize NOW (“carpe diem”), for time waits for no one. Stars may fall, suns burn out, seas dry up –yet time moves on, irreversibly. No one can turn back the clock one fleeting second.
It is tyrannically relentless. A moment never comes in which I will not grow older, bringing me closer to “nunc permanens” or timeless time. It’s like God gives the flowing NOW so that with it I can have the NOW that never passes.
Sliding into eighty, I hear Saint Augustine: “What is not eternal, is nothing.” So, if I have forgotten, I must start anew, NOW, while there is “time”- to seek FIRST the kingdom of God and his justice. All other things will follow.
How will I know? Obviously, by listening.
In what language?
As I slide into eighty I agree with Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra and realize that STILLNESS is God’s first language. Everything else may just be a bad translation.
“Be still, and know that I AM.”
But what does it mean to be still? It is to become conscious without thought.
You are most yourself when you are still.
When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed your present form. You are also who you will be when the form dissolves.
In sum, stillness is consciousness – unconditioned, formless, and timeless.
So, therefore, my friends, my dear ones, accept my Greetings of Peace: Shalom! Salaam! Welcome to “I-80”
FINIS