Quantum time, quantum people

It's unnerving, and rather irritating, when someone you reconnect with after 4+ decades tries to pin you to a point on a linear time scale, expecting you not to move from that point.

Change is the only certainty in life, perhaps in all reality. Some people box their memories of another on a point in time and expect them to permanently reside there, existing only within the two points on a timeline, their timeline. Then ask many years, timelines, later why we aren't still sitting on that stretch of time. It's worse when that stretch of time is relatively short.

Same could be said of history. History is not just one recollection or explanation of a point or stretch of time. It's multiple recollections, even interpretations. Any narrative of history should always be considered in that way. Partly because of the quantum nature of time, where past, present and future are the same (time flows back and forth, it never stands still). Even if we were present in a point of historical time, our recollection is within the frame of our own mind. And our recollections are biased.

What I eventually realized was that person has pinned his or herself to that point in time, and thus the image of another person occupying that same point never moves on. And neither does the image of his or herself. Those people are prisoners of their own minds, stuck on a small point or stretch of time, refusing (or afraid) to move forward. And expecting other people to be the same. 

                                    Henrik Sorensen/Getty