Deep Time

 

There’s a lot going down in the world right now. The earthquake and Tsunami in Japan seems surreal in its devastation, and for the past week my belly has felt leaden with the stories of these displaced people. Then there’s Libya, a country I barely recognize, but which is suddenly a place I’m supposed to concern myself with greatly. I’m still unclear about the goings on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Palestine. And how are our brothers and sisters recovering from the quake in Chile last year? Or our Haitian brothers and sisters? Our Kiwi friends? And how is our beloved Gulf; its creatures and those who make their livelihood off of her bounty? I am dizzy with it all, and the only way to find peace seems to be through a belief in a deeper sense of time. The concept of Deep Time was developed in the 18th century by Scottish geologist James Hutton and has become my own personal creation song.

The Earth is an ancient cosmic relic, and Life as we know it flourishes atop her lithosphere; the crackling crust that bangs together, enfolds itself, and splits apart from time to time. We live on a giant creme brulee crust, with its pudding underbelly, the asthenosphere, a viscous river of molten rock moving our tectonic plates about at a snail’s pace like 90-year-old shuffle boarders. The great events that shape our human history are but hiccups in the timeline of our planet, and I can’t help but observe these events with hope. With a slight re-calibration of my viewpoint, I can observe these events from a perspective of acceptance, because simply put, they are our present reality. According to the incredibly simple philosophy of Byron Katie, arguing with reality is insane. Life is simply as it is, and can be accepted or warred against. It’s our choice. I’ve found that making that choice is easier said than done, but with practice it becomes more involuntary, like blinking or the process of digestion. A possible perspective: Everything is perfect in the world right now. All is right with the world. In a single human lifetime, it might be hard to discern the opportunity now available to the Japanese people post-disaster. But if you go deeper and take a long-term approach to this situation, you might find that the canvas has been wiped clean for this nation. They now have an opportunity to rebuild, re-calibrate, realign, recycle, revise, recreate, reincarnate. As a result of the current pressures being placed upon the Japanese people, future generations will thrive in a more technologically, socially and spiritually evolved nation. I do not wish to suggest that hand in hand with that there will not be pain. Pain is inevitable, but with that pain there will be immense growth.

Geology for me has always been a balm to my human suffering. It puts into perspective the blink that is my existence in relation to the depth of earthly time. It is easy to forget as we lose ourselves in the flow of human drama that our species, Homo sapiens walked out of Africa only 200,000 some odd years ago and that our planet has been dated to roughly 4.54 billion years. That shit is old! And so much went down before we were even an idea. It’s as though the earth farted and humanity was born. That is an accurate parallel to the age of humanity in relation to the age of the earth. I recall visiting the La Brea Tar Pit Museum as a kid and a docent using a roll of toilet paper to illustrate our place in the Earthly story. If the entire roll of TP is the timeline of the planet, we are a small shred taken from the corner of the last piece. No bigger than a Tic-Tac, yet man are we self-important! I recall also watching a documentary once on the Permian Extinction, one of my favorite topics. Formerly known as the Great Dying, the Permian-Triassic extinction event occurred roughly 251.4 million years ago and was the Earth’s most devastating mass extinction. 96% of all marine life and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species died off. The biodiversity of the planet was decimated and took eons and epochs to recover to its presently flourishing state. Life took a hit, and moved on. Life re-organized itself and re-distributed its molecules into new and fantastic species after laying dormant in a deadlock for 4-6 million years.

The Earth has her own timeline, and perhaps hers is subject to one of greater magnitude. We do, after all exist within a universal system so grand, that even our Milky Way galaxy could be equated to that tiny Tic-Tac tear-off from the end of a roll of toilet paper. So in terms of dealing with our present reality, I choose to view it through the lens of Deep Time, knowing that it is all unfolding in perfect order, evolving and blossoming into ever new patterns of Life.