The Shape of Time

Long ago, a work colleague asked me an interesting question: “When you think about time, how do you picture it?” Without hesitating, I said “It’s a straight line.”

I was certain this was the only correct answer. How could it be otherwise? All our lives, we’ve seen the important dates in history laid out on a straight timeline. That depiction is so prevalent, we’ve come to equate it with the actual reality of time. Everyone knows that time is a straight line, marching forward in a linear progression … right?

But this art director didn’t see it that way. “I see it as a circle,” she said.

That made no sense to me way back then, but now I understand her thinking. The years have shown me quite clearly that everything in the physical world has a beginning and an end – an Alpha and an Omega. And if we pay attention, we see that the end is not the final chapter in the story.

Think of a seed falling to the ground, which gives rise to a new tree. The tree produces new seeds that fall, and when the tree dies it nourishes the next new trees, which produce more seeds. And the cycle continues.

In the end, things return to their beginning, as symbolized so elegantly in the Enso circle in Zen Buddhism.

Yes, time can be a circle.

Now I'll come full circle and ask you the same question that was put to me long ago: “When you think about time, how do you picture it?”

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