Anomaly in Time

We humans take time for granted. There is the past, the present, and the future. Times moves in one direction. It’s simple. Except that it isn’t.

Physicists of many stripes haven’t achieved consensus on what time is, or if it’s real. A quick Google search using terms like “construct of time” or “time is a concept” yields tons of articles about the nature of time. Some physicists say the past, present and future occur all at once. I can’t even wrap my head around that, since I can only experience time from my individual perspective. Time can seem to move slowly or quickly, but always seems to be linear, moving toward the future. Other physicists say it doesn’t exist. I guess that is similar to everything occurring all at once. Whatever the answer is, it’s challenging to think of experiencing it as anything but linear, since that’s all we know and rely on socially.

However, people do experience things that seemed to be out of linear sequence. People have accurate premonitions about future events – even if these are small personal events – or are able to perceive past events, such as stories about tourists seeing battles at Gettysburg or other war sites.

I do have the occasional dream that foreshadows contact with old friends I haven’t talked to in years (I dream they contact me, and then they call “out of the blue” the next day), but I think far more interesting is an experience I had when we first moved to Portland.

My husband and I had rented a small house. We had moved to Portland for his new job, and I wasn’t working yet, so I was home during the day. One day, I had put dinner on the stove to simmer and sat down to read at the kitchen table. Though it was a bit earlier than I expected, I heard my husband’s car come up the drive. So did the cats. They had been laying down, but heard his car and got up to head to the door to greet him. The car engine was turned off and the door creaked open and shut. I heard a few footsteps and then nothing. I figured he was just standing still for a moment. I decided to go outside and greet him. I opened the door…and saw nothing at all outside. I was really confused. I had heard the car. So had the cats. They had perked up even more when they heard his footsteps. I looked at the houses next door, but no cars had appeared on their drives at that moment in time, so that didn’t seem like a likely explanation. I told myself that maybe he had driven up the drive, gotten out and then realized he needed to go pickup something and had left again.

I returned to my reading in the kitchen, but still puzzled over what I had just experienced. About 20 minutes later, the sequence occurred again: the car coming up the drive, the cats perking up, the car turning off, a door creaking open and closed, and footsteps to the backdoor. And this time, it really was my husband coming home from work. I asked him why he’d come home earlier but left without coming in. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind, so I told him the story. He is a very logical person, and said he assumed that I had heard a neighbor’s car. I agreed with him, even though I didn’t believe that explanation, since the cats had responded, too. And just as with other events in my life, I can’t ignore things that animals also respond to. And these cats didn’t ever respond to the sound of cars that weren’t ours.

I know something really interesting happened with regard to time, but I don’t know the what, why or how. But I agree with physicists that we don’t know everything about time!