The Virtues of Linear Time

When I was little, I thought the ability to travel in time would be great. I could relive the best moments of my own history, travel into the distant past to the time of the Egyptians, or jump forward into the future to find flying cars and a world controlled by robots. This desire, however, somewhat changed as I grew older and thought more about the confines of time and the complications that come with messing with it. Time is one of the few linear systems in our world and its simplicity brings humans great comfort. It is consistent; it will always go on at the same rate. When humans break this linear sequence of time, the safety is gone, forcing us to face a multitude of new problems, which are almost always misunderstood. What becomes reality if people disobey the confines of time by traveling through it? Can history be rewritten? Can history, the one thing that can be written in stone, be meddled with, distorted, changed? These questions stretch our minds and only leave us with more unknowns. In Kindred, Dana cannot make sense of these paradoxes, she simply must accept and move on in order to survive. Although the consequences of her actions in the past may be inconsequential, she must treat history as a pliable entity, she must think of every single decision as one that might influence something in the future. Dana must constantly make sure not to dramatically alter the future while she is living in the past, only adding stress and worry to her situation. Dana’s difficulty controlling the consequences of time travel only exhibits its downsides and the great unknowns of a non-linear time system. I don’t think we can ever understand time beyond its natural form. Though our minds wonder with the possibilities of time travel and the intrigue of the paradoxes of time, I think we are much better off living linearly. In a world where few things are certain, the clock’s reliable ticking is an undervalued virtue of life.