Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

I just got done watching the three part series Wormhole. I’ve concluded that God may or may not exist. Black holes are fascinating things, but I will only be able to understand them abstractly. Time travel will not be possible for a million bazillion years, if that. I think that God (or nature or whatever metaphysical force presents itself) has woven time in such a way that, like the Tower of Babel, people may never destroy or assume His power. Oh, and that time is relative and unique to each individual (which is extremely, albeit abstractly, encouraging). So my mind was blown, but I’m still standing in the same place. 

Actually, I’m pretty overwhelmed. Not so much by my small life, but at the very fact that I exist at all. That I’m a cognitive, self-aware, empathetic creature. 

It also made me a little nostalgic. We used to talk of God and science and believed the two are so very intertwined. I got God and he got science, and one of the first books we bonded over was Einstein’s Dreams. For some gift-giving season, I can’t remember the specific occasion, I gave him a black and brown leather watch that matched the book cover perfectly. The watch was dead, the small silver hands stopped within fifteen minutes of each other. It was to represent one of the essays in which young lovers move to the center of time, a place where time stopped, so that they would always be together. Be so feverishly wrapped up in that kiss. When I moved away, he wore it everywhere. He never bothered to tell me, to impress me. In fact, I think he was a little embarrassed to tell me how much he missed me, that it was emasculating. I found out about it when I saw pictures of him on facebook. The boy never had to prove his love. He just loved.

We should have seen it coming - the foreshadowing was evident. We were naive, and once we moved away from gazing at each other, we became bitter that we wasted time and hadn’t looked elsewhere. Angry words and angry months were exchanged. I stormed up to his house on a hot day in August, swapped his belongings for mine, and left with a new set of principles and rules for the next man. I haven’t seen him, the boy I loved, since. Physically, sure, but he’s a new person completely. The few times I’ve made eye contact my brain only comprehends a stranger’s face. 

This is only the readers digest version. A better, sadder, recount of my first love will be detailed later. But the whole point of bringing it up was that I am truly sad that I haven’t been able to talk about God and the universe with someone who gets it. Someone who reasons and logics and calculates - dreams and loves because of it, not in spite of it. —Don’t get me wrong, there’s no yearning to look back. Mostly, I’m thinking (in my best valley-turned-Cosmo-girl/Carrie Bradshaw attitude) “Really? I wasted my first love that young? We only get two great loves in life, and my first was when I was 17?!”  Because, for some unknown reason, I think the romance bank is only so full and I can make limited withdrawals. It’s strange. I’m sweet to these following men, but it feels less and less genuine the further I get from the original. 

And now I’m rambling. A sure sign I’m ready for bed. In any case, the book is beautiful, and I’m sure I will never understand time mathematically and reasonably, but from what I do understand, God and science will end up proving themselves and the truths from Lightman’s book will remain truths -regardless of our attempts to understand the highest force.