Time Travel

It's funny that we desire to travel through time. Besides self-ish interest, what purpose would it serve? We are actually time travelers all the time. Or should I say channel surfers?

We get carried away either by thinking about our past or piling up with dreams of the future. These two activities take most of our time. The actual now moment we are currently experiencing is something we would rather not like to have. It's far better and safer to sail in our dreams, where all the outcomes are already known and we can speculate with endless what-if scenarios. The future is even better. For us it has not happened yet and, therefore, we can make it up any way we desire. Well, almost. The only limitation is that we cannot just dream about anything of which we have no knowledge. For example, in medieval times people did not dream about having cars and flying around the world in airplanes. So dreaming is also quite boring. All the outcomes are predictable in one way or another—like LEGO blocks that can only be set up in a certain way based on their shapes.

Our channel surfing concerns the current living moment. We seldom stay in the channel. We'd rather jump on and off many times in a second. This happens by switching either to the dream or the history channel. Reality TV is something we pre-fer to consume as a recorded version, just to be on the safe side.

Still, all the action happens in the reality mode. We cannot change our history and cannot predict the future. We have to do all the things right now. The paradox is that the only unpredictable (and therefore nonboring) moment is the fresh now time, what we are all the time experiencing. And the best part is that it's interactive. We can take part in all the activities and get involved. It's amazing how many of us are not taking up this opportunity. People would rather switch to old classics or sci-fi stories that have predictable endings. They'd rather opt for something that smells, tastes, and sounds like real life but is not. Artificial life seems to be the best act in town.

Considering the low ratings for actually living in the moment, it is amazing that people would even dream of time traveling. What would they do then if they cannot live now? Sure it's a more interactive TV show to go for the future and know that you are able to come back to the original time whenever things start to get too serious (or should I say real?). Time travel would be just another way of surfing channels— just a sportier version compared to staring at a glass box or daydreaming from the sofa.

Nevertheless, the basic fact is that we always figure out new ways to escape reality. We'd rather either skip to our own natural channels or use the manmade "entertainment" options. When was the last time you really watched something on the TV or listened to the radio? Most of the time, we are desperate to fill up any silent moments by whatever background noise from TV, radio, or MP3 players we can find. Still, the fact is that you cannot avoid living in the moment— you can only pretend you're not there. How good our skills are determine how good our private scam is. Our consciousness is always on, and it is permanently stuck on the reality channel. And most of us just cannot live without constantly surfing channels. Restless 24/7 escape from the reality—out now!