Time Traveling, Kind Traveling

Yesterday and today I went time traveling and it was everything I thought it could be. Time travel it turns out is surprisingly easy. You don’t need Superman flying faster than the speed of light, all you need to start is some bad Phillies Baseball and the rest happens by itself.

The Phillies baseball isn’t mandatory for time travel, but last night it was the catalyst to help propel me. When I sit in Citizens Bank Ballpark before a game and they’re prepping the field, the scent of the fresh cut grass alone takes me back to my childhood summers in Maine, which is my personal happy place, but I digress. This post is about time traveling and kind traveling, we got some science and love to discuss here, Northeast Harbor can wait for another day.

Seeing the once mighty Phillies get beaten like red headed step children by the Dodgers rocketed me right to 1977 when they always beat the Phillies. It didn’t matter who was in the lineup, you knew the Phills were going to find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and last night they took a good performance from a dominating left handed pitcher and did zippo with it. Like I said, “hello 1977”, but time travel isn’t perfected yet so there are times when you can hit the right year, but not the right place. These bugs can be worked out.

Anyway, you’re probably asking where the Kindness comes in, and here it is. Right after the game I met up with one of my oldest and closest friends whom I hadn’t seen in 10 years, and BAM! I was transported thirty-two years into the past where the laughs and the bonds were as strong as they’d ever been.

We talked about the odds we’d be productive members of society (50-50 at best), insanely bad decisions (alcohol, cars, trains, and a lots of law enforcement), incredibly lucky breaks (coincidentally, more alcohol, cars, trains and slow footed law enforcement), and how cool and easy time travel is. The best part of time traveling back though, was to realize those 11687 days only made the bond stronger. You know you made it. Those chapters that were full of questions and suspense, “will she say yes, what about his promotion, will we ever finish school?…
Hey Sweeps we made it this far. The story is far from over, but we made it past a lot of the scary stuff, and when you kick back with the beverage of your choice, an old friend and some time travel, you realize John Lennon was right, All You Need Is Love”. You’d think time travel would be exhausting, but It’s such a treat for the soul, that it fills you with good feelings every time you think about it. Your body is cranking out Imunoglobbin A, building anti-bodies, probably even kicking out a few endorphins, because it’s one of the kindest acts you can do for yourself, thus “helpers high” is coming your way with a bag of Dorito’s. Woo Hoo!!

So Time travel back in time was great, how about the future? I did that too, BOOM! You can do it too. I was lucky enough to go to a wedding of wonderful girl who’s like family to my wife and I. She’s been there for us, and we for her. We’ve known her through ups and downs, and witnessed her in dark moments you want to rescue her from, but you couldn’t. You could only sit there in the moment knowing that someday, love would rule the day, but not then, not there. That story was scare-ree, but today seeing her wed her soul mate was seeing the future, and the fact that the future worked out after all, is another treat for the soul. And let me tell you, you get a day of happy hugs, that’s kindness on a galactic scale, as befits a time traveler.

Like John Lennon sung, “Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.” So Time travel baby!

Pick up that phone and call a friend, or a relative you haven’t talked to in a while. Hit someone on Facebook and make plans to re-acquaint. Treat your soul to some love and go time traveling.

A New Hope

With homage to George Lucas, I’m borrowing his subtitle from Episode IV of Star Wars, because today 12-22-12 offers all of us a new hope. We’re still here. Alive, well and pretty much doing what we did the day before again, but that’s a choice not a sentence and I’m going to get right back to that point.

See it turns out after years of worry for some people, or wonder for others, the Mayans were wrong. Well, they were right in a sense, their calender did end and if they were here today, they would start a new one. But we didn’t experience a polar shift, deadly solar flares, fire raining from the sky, or a zombie apocalypse. You could make the argument that Eagles coach Andy Reid is a zombie. He’s been a dead man coaching since November and if you’ve heard him at a press conferences, then you know this guy is a zombie. And his play calling? Maybe that makes sense if you’re undead, but not if you’re among the living.

But let me get back to my point. Our lives continue and the world goes on, but are we going to live today and tomorrow like the yesterdays before it? We don’t have to, because its a choice not a sentence and that’s my point. Whether we thought the world was going to end or not, yesterday for good or for ill is gone, so how are we going to live today? Right now. Do we go to bed leaving our families, our communities, the world better than we found it? Do we see the face of our creator in all of his or her horrible disguises, as Mother Teresa used to speak of, and do we recognize the divinity of the person before us?

Today I have a new hope. I hope the first day of a new Mayan calender, which is supposed to be a time of peace and enlightenment, actually is. I hope every small act of kindness I perform or write about pushes us closer to a critical mass where kindness transforms itself from tenets we hear as children, to a natural behavior without reminders.  Kindness is within all of us. The news and politicians tell us otherwise, but we are kind and like the winter solstice, darkness, which envelopes us from time to time eventually gives way to more light each and every day.

So today as the light grows I have a new hope. Today I hope I recognize humanity not just in my friends, but in the people who are not so pleasant to deal with. I hope that I find chances to spread kindness in small ways and if the opportunity presents itself, large ways too. I hope that by doing that, I can affect a positive change in the people around me and spread kindness like a healing salve and that others will take the time and effort to do the same. Its not that hard to do either. creating cold fusion from the atom is hard. Being nice, honoring the humanity in the people we meet is on the whole pretty easy. Who knows, if the Mayans were right we might just have begun a whole new epoch where this will be the norm, and if the Mayans were wrong, or it was all just a bunch of mistranslated Pre-Columbian graffiti, then maybe we can start our own period of peace and enlightenment, one kind act at a time.

Be Kind  – Sean