Timelessness

“What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that made you forget time? There lies the myth to live by.”

Joseph Campbell

As a child, I had a feeling of timelessness when I was engulfed in Nature.

Watching a sunrise on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, its sandy stretch of crushed seashells and pebbles tickled by an ever-lapping lick of the lake water on the land.

Exploring a corner sandlot, undeveloped, unconstrained by concrete and buildings, with tall trees and half-exposed roots stretched around and over me.

Nature was there even riding in the car with my father to the country to get fresh sweet corn, the window open and the air streaming over my upturned little face, watching the vastness of the cloud-spattered blue sky streaking by.

To me, this was the timelessness that Campbell speaks of—the type that was infinite and that exposed the beauty and secret corners of nature.

Another kind of timelessness is a blanking out of time—a numbness to time. It was solving problems, and being paid to do so. A job. Perhaps not always as much fun as being out in nature, but a nice way to pass the time and get paid for it. Raise a family from it. Take my own kids on a vacation in nature.

Working in information technology, I was the magician, taming the machine to do what the client needed, to save that user profile or lookup an insurance claim payment.

Now, I am retired from corporate life, no longer bound to solve those problems. I seek more and more of the first kind of timelessness. And I will create more photographs along the way that remind me of those timeless times.

Note: Corn and tree root Images on this post are courtesy of Pexel.com