"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Part 3

“Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?” (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig).

This book was an interesting read. I found some parts more enjoyable than others, some parts not so much. But, this above text reflected what I did enjoy about the piece. I liked how the book discussed things in terms of time and the reflection back on it. Time is such an interesting subject because it is a human construct and perception of something our minds cant truly grasp.

Our leading scientist suggest that time is our minds attempt at normalizing the world around us. Without time we would be unable to properly coordinate our day-to-day lives without any way to logically think about the subject of time. We must base our world in some rhythmic cycle, because everything our reality presents us is based in patterns and rhythms. Such as the turning of the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, the tides coming and going, the annual monsoons, the transformation of the moons reflected picture, everything in our world is based on cycles. So it makes sense we construct a cycle such as time to help chart our day-to-day recycling lives.

Scientist believe the purest root of “time” is the flash bang the started our universe. What we perceive as “time” is the actual expansion of the universe into possibly emptiness. This is fascinating that the human mind rationalized this irrational experience into a tangible tool. We base our lives off time, without this pattern in our lives nothing but chaos would persist. Time is the fundamental building block in every human’s life, however it’s individual perception of itself is changed over longer durations of time.

In other words, I remember as a child reaching the age of 10 and thinking that that duration was long. However when I reached 20 I felt the duration from 10 to 20 felt shorter than the duration from 0 to 10. Additionally, an individual year between the age of nine and 10 felt much longer than the age between 22 and 23. This is also fascinating, as we, a biotic system adapted well from evolution has created a rationalization that is born into every baby child about this expansion into nothingness.

This book brings up fascinating topics that make me look deeper into thing I generally have taken for granted my entire life. This is what I like about this book. Time is really at the base of everything, this will interesting to keep in mind as I encounter new things in life.