Physics Week One: The Meaning of Time

Hi there. I am Ashley. This is my blog for my physics (and biology) class at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences. I'll write some stuff, hope its enjoyable....or at least makes sense.

To start let me say a little about what I'm doing at ACCHS. I'll write a more proper bio for my first biology post.

I came to chinese medicine through a combination of my personal and professional interests. Personally, I love holistic medicine and do not trust western doctors. I recognize that they have their time and place, but I don't think pharmacological drugs are the appropriate place to start when dealing with general health concerns. I've lived with chronic pain since I was a teenager and yoga and tui na have dramatically helped me (as well as acupuncture back when I was first injured). My dad has been in and out of the hospital my whole life and I have seen him take pill after pill to band-aid each health concern, and only recently has he started to actually work toward a healthier lifestyle. My dad doesn't want a healthier lifestyle and western medicine doesn't want him to get healthier either. You don't make any money off of someone who gives up beer and bacon burritos in favor of ginger and garlic and greens. Personally, I'd rather eat my medicine, stretch a lot, feel great, and save the drugs for when they are truly appropriate.

Professionally, I have worked in harm reduction in one capacity or another for the last 7 years. Primarily this has been at needle exchanges and as an outreach worker. Recently I was working for a women's health organization serving HIV+ women and providing HIV tests to women. I loved the work but some of the interventions we used were a far cry from why I thought I got hired. The testing was great and our clients were amazing, resilient, dynamic women, but when you work with women who have every reason to mistrust a white service care provider, offering 'strength-based case management' feels real patronizing. "Well you've been through tough experiences before and you got through it, tell me what you did to overcome xyz." Barf. There was something missing. Not just programmatically, but I won't get into office politics. Anyway, trying to figure out where I wanted to go from there involved a good 6 months-a year of trying to figure out if working in another non-profit would frustrate me just as much (probably) or what discipline I would want to pursue if I went back to school (all of them and none of them).

I'm not sure how it came to me, but suddenly I realized that TCM could address my love for natural healing, my drive to help people, and my frustration with the top-down service provision of the non-profit industrial complex all in one glorious program. I want to help people, but I want to help people who come to me willingly and with dedication rather than trying to convince women who've been taking HIV meds almost as long as I've been alive why they should keep taking them in exchange for a $10 gift card. I want to help people with my own two hands, something concrete and real. I could say so much more about this, but on to other questions.

Honestly, when the question of my thoughts on Physics was first posed I was a little nervous. Its the first day of class, I don't know what physics is, why is he asking this and making me answer it in front of the whole class?!?!?! But as we got to talking I realized that Physics is the stuff the universe is made of (literally and figuratively). Questions of the concept of time, the universe, energy in western vs. eastern terms are all very fascinating to me, although I've never had the opportunity to formally study them. But what young person doesn't look into the sky and wonder whats going on up there, who is going on up there, and how can humankind better itself to deserve the farthest reaches of the galaxy and beyond? Teach me, dear classmates and professor, the inner workings of the universe and I'll do my best to contribute my thoughts! Forgive me if I find myself just wanting to reference Star Trek though ;)

Regarding time, I definitely think clocks are just reference points to help us stay connected to a common structure. Each one of us lives in a reality of our own, with our own perspectives and perceptions that may or may not align to the next person's. As such, time is either a ridiculous joke, or a fluid measure of when we need to be somewhere and what we need to do at certain expected times. I experience "time" speeding up and slowing down all the time, based on how in or out of the moment I may be. As many of us said in class, I often experience enjoyable moments as moving too fast, the day is suddenly over and I don't know how its gotten so late or why I have to go to bed and say goodbye to such a delicious day. On the other hand, those times when I'm unmotivated or waiting for friends to get off work to come hang out seem to tick by so slowly that I begin to think the joyous moments will never come again. On the other hand, there are those times completely outside of time. Traveling usually seems like a vacation from real time. Life exists back in Oakland where clocks exist and this adventure is hiding in a cove off of the river of time. When I am at my best I live in moments where time moves fast and yet I am not aware of it. I love not being aware of time.

When I was younger I was compelled to live by the clock. My school conditioning taught me that you should be somewhere a little early if not exactly on time. Unfortunately most of my friends did not live according to traditional time and I found myself waiting around for hours while a friend got distracted by her guitar on the way to pick me up. I don't believe there is anything natural about monochronic time. As I mentioned, it is a reference point to common structure, but a common structure is a symptom of modern, capitalist society and not a reality for cultures that value a responsibility to live over living to serve responsibilities. Eddie's comment in class about having time for life and joy and sex and yes also work in Brazil reminded me of my best friend's story about traveling in Brazil and how normal it was for people to get caught up in a spontaneous dance party in the streets on the way to where they needed to be. If you got somewhere late it wasn't the end of the world. My American brain couldn't comprehend how you could show up late to work because you were busy dancing, but it could certainly yern for it.

I know plenty of people in Oakland whose lives somehow fit into that polychronic view of time and I envy them. I sometimes think people who somehow afford to work a couple odd jobs and spend most of their time hanging out and playing music live in some sort of alternate reality. They've somehow accessed something closer to the reality the universe meant for us. I often joke that we live in a bizarro world. How can we live in a place with so much violence, homelessness, depression and other states of mental dis-ease, where we are expected to work, work, work, if we want to eat or have shelter, and yet America has the resources to feed and house us all. Its soul-crushing in its malevolence. As some of the traditional American values of sexism, white supremacy, heterosexism, etc are slowly chipped away at by social justice movements and the power of social media, I feel a glimmer of hope, but usually its just a glimmer. Maybe the sicknesses of our culture are an example of entropy. Maybe humankind will work towards the sort of egalitarian utopia, or maybe disorder and drudgery is the big cosmic joke on us. This post wasnt' supposed to get so dark, but well, there it is.