Time Travel

Earlier this week I heard a commentary on time travel.  In it the commentator remarked that most time travelers seek to go back in time; going backward, she said, creates a host of challenges that nothing can be done to change history.  One of my favorite rom-com films is Kate and Leopold, and in that film Kate is charged with time traveling to enable history.  If she doesn't go back and marry Leopold, then their children and grandchildren won't exist and can't accomplish the things that history tells us that they have accomplished.

Going forward in time could be easier since we don't have to worry about upsetting history, but what we are stepping into is of necessity much more mysterious and possibly problematic. I will write more about forward time travel tomorrow.

This weekend several media accounts have marked the 45th anniversary of the Lunar Landing of Apollo 11.  The stories have made me a bit nostalgic and wishing just a bit that I could time travel.  I don't want to be overly idyllic about the late 60s and early 70s because there was a lot of turmoil, but there was also a sense of hope in this country that has steadily dwindled since that time. 

As I recall my big eyes as a young person, glued to the television joining the rest of the country (maybe the world) in watching the landing on the moon, I believe I thought there was nothing we couldn't accomplish.  The Greatest Generation, who had won World War II, was still relatively young, and they'd come home to change the world on the home front as they had in Europe and Asia.

We had a civil rights law that meant, as a young woman, I could pursue careers that had only been open to women previously when the men were at war.  President Nixon had declared war on cancer, and little could we know that what then was a certain death sentence would by now, in many cases, become a chronic or curable condition.  The end of the 1967 war in the Middle East left us hopeful for peace in the region.

So, if I chose to travel backward in time, it would be to this day 45 years ago.  I wouldn't want to change anything but to just experience that sense of hopefulness again.  To remember on a cellular level what it felt like to think there wasn't anything either I or we collectively couldn't accomplish if we put our heads, hearts, and intention to it.

Hopefulness

As the sun goes down today, I notice that the days have become visibly longer now that we are a month since the winter solstice.  Each year at about this time, I make the same observation, which is inevitably followed by a sense of hopefulness as more light comes into each day.  In a few more weeks, I will be able to leave my workplace in the daylight instead of the darkness.  A few more weeks after that I will be able to walk in the daylight after I get home. Hope...the hope that will get me through the long days of winter.

I now stand on the precipice of diving into writing a new book.  To do so implies hope: why else would I start?  If I put in the time, creativity, perseverance, determination, focus, and patience, I have hope that a book, which will touch the hearts of thousands, will be born.  While the hope for longer days requires nothing of me except the passage of time,  I know the hope that births books is at least as much sweat and work as it is trusting something good will result.

Leading from the Heart demanded over four year of writing, rewriting, taking feedback from friends who read it,  rewriting, writing, editing, tearing it apart and putting it together differently...and that was before the real work began.  Months, then years, of attempting to find an agent and/or a publisher were followed by more rewriting and editing. Then, one day a miracle happened: the book lay in my hands with my name on the cover.

I walked into a Barnes and Noble near my home in North Carolina, and by the front door stood 100 books, quickly flying out the door.  The store called and reported that they'd sold out of the book before a book signing the next day. A Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection.  Letters followed from people who had been touched by the book.  Executives wanted me to coach them so they could lead from the heart. Keynote addresses offered the opportunity to reach audiences that may not have found the book otherwise. As recently at 2011, I met a woman in Washington, who recognized my name and related that she and her co-workers had been inspired by my words a decade earlier. My hope, and all the determination that went with it, was well placed.

With Choice Point...not so much.  I still feel it is my most important writing, but 16 years after I "finished" it, the manuscript still sits in my computer, now badly dated.  I haven't given up hope, but I have to admit that hope for Choice Point  has been tarnished by time.

Standing ready to surrender myself one more time to the hope that my words will touch and inspire the hearts of my readers, I wish for the hope that just requires the passing of time, but I know one more time that I am committing months or years of sweat and determination in support of hope.  Perseverance and determination in service of hope is required many places in life, from buying the first home to a well-funded retirement, rearing children who become responsible adults, and especially a lasting relationship.  The shining light of hope demands the grittiness of thousands of acts of intention along the way before, like a miracle one day, hope lays realized in our hands.

Rescuing Hope and Love

I've watched several Christmas movies this weekend in multi-task mode.  Watch movie and clean. Watch movie and bake. Watch movie and wrap presents. 

All Christmas movies seem to be the same movie: someone who is embittered catches the magic of Christmas and rekindles hope and love.  Some would say it is sappy.  It maybe, but isn't rescuing hope and love what Christmas is about?  Aren't hope and love the light in the darkness?  Whatever our faith tradition, the darkest time of the year seems an appropriate time to look in our hearts, and wherever hope has been tarnished, rescue hope and love.