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The Strange Progress of Time

Steven

Hello. Slight smile

Normally, I don't see any particular significance in dreams - so often, these just seem like a mix-up of different elements of a day's incidents. A while back, though, I had a dream that featured my late father *as if, in quite a matter-of-fact way, he were still alive*. Now, I'm wary of thinking that was merely consolation on my part and, besides, dreams are frequently nonsensical in nature and content; but this incredible feeling nagged away at me that my Dad was still living. And this feeling wasn't encouraged by anything especially emotional or important in that dream - if anything, it actually felt like I was foolish to believe that death might be the end...

This was a really strange, uncanny experience: to 'know' that my father had not really passed on, and to feel like a fool for believing the seemingly definite fact that he has passed on.

I've read that autists have issues with time, in various ways...but could this actually be an aspect of ASD that is, again, wrongly portrayed as a failing on our collective part in contrast to neurotypicals' 'success' in understanding the supposedly-linear flow of time? Is their understanding of time wrong, and the actual truth far more multi-dimensional than appearances might suggest?

Parents

  • It's far from an original thought but I wonder if life goes on for those we consider to be dead? After all, it's only our awareness of their absence, & our limited senses and science that marks them out as dead. Because we are absent from their 'lives', the deceased might consider *us* to be absent (if indeed they remain conscious of their former existence).

    Maybe they are trapped in time? By which I mean they carry on with their daily activities while unaware that anything has dramatically changed. My mum once said 'Hello' to a neighbour as he passed by. He apparently didn't see or hear her and didn't acknowledge her, despite usually being very friendly and talkative. Later, upon asking why the neighbour might have ignored her, my grandmother told her that the man had died the previous day. This, I believe, is not a rare kind of 'ghost story' at all; quite common, in fact. Is it possible that, from his perspective, my mother and her world had ceased to exist the moment his life (supposedly) ended?

    There's a line or two from a Sylvia Plath poem which sort-of hints at all this. And perhaps expresses how fleeting and yet intimate the connections between us all might be:

    'I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

    I lift my lids and all is born again.

    (I think I made you up inside my head)'.

Reply

  • It's far from an original thought but I wonder if life goes on for those we consider to be dead? After all, it's only our awareness of their absence, & our limited senses and science that marks them out as dead. Because we are absent from their 'lives', the deceased might consider *us* to be absent (if indeed they remain conscious of their former existence).

    Maybe they are trapped in time? By which I mean they carry on with their daily activities while unaware that anything has dramatically changed. My mum once said 'Hello' to a neighbour as he passed by. He apparently didn't see or hear her and didn't acknowledge her, despite usually being very friendly and talkative. Later, upon asking why the neighbour might have ignored her, my grandmother told her that the man had died the previous day. This, I believe, is not a rare kind of 'ghost story' at all; quite common, in fact. Is it possible that, from his perspective, my mother and her world had ceased to exist the moment his life (supposedly) ended?

    There's a line or two from a Sylvia Plath poem which sort-of hints at all this. And perhaps expresses how fleeting and yet intimate the connections between us all might be:

    'I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

    I lift my lids and all is born again.

    (I think I made you up inside my head)'.

Children
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