When I think about the first tiny creatures and early animals like Trilobites, it is tempting to think of them as loving a long, long time ago. I think it is rather conventional for my mind to yield to the outrageous divisions of time and put some kind of linear order in it all. Past, present, future. All are assigned their correct places.
I prefer to see these ancient new beginnings as happening right now with me in their midst. Today is the day when those small interpreneurs grasped life and became part of the universal living web. Not an isolated island but part of an event that never really had a beginning and will never end. It will always be.
My mind doesn’t always like this kind of thinking, or rather no-thinking. I still like to push aside the illusion of time and sit in the midst of these timeless events. I am part of the same web as those early “first” creatures. I was and will always be with them. We are all first-borns.
I know that I have learned to live in a world that is conveniently framed by time. It seems to make more sense to see events emerging in orderly fashion, one after the other, each given its place in our measures of time.
But I like better to see us all as walking forward not in single-file but all abreast. I resist time imposing its order on me. Time, for me, is a constraint which I learned to use as a way to put order into my world. Instead, I am now opting for a world in which Trilobites can swim thru my every day.