Journeying through time
“These times are urgent. Let us slow down”.
This West African proverb shared by Bayo Akamolafe is etched into my thinking and practice these days. The words offer an invitation to slow down into a deeper sense of awareness of our actions; becoming much more present with the world and our role in shaping it.
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I remember vividly the day I first encountered Deep Time; blessed with the opportunity to go on a Deep Time Walk with Dr Stephan Harding, who crafted a 4.6km walk as a way to journey into the 4.6 billion years of history of Planet Earth.
Accompanied by students from Schumacher College, we took a walk together along the south Devon coastline, with Stephan pausing at various points along the way to tell us what was happening in the evolution of Earth.
After walking for a good 30 minutes or so, Stephan stopped triumphantly on the side of the hillside and declared: “Life begins here.” This was 3.8 billion years ago, with the evolution of single-celled prokaryotic cells such as bacteria.
We continued the journey, pausing to marvel at various moments of the Earth's history over time:
“Extreme ice age here!”
“Multi-celled organisms are evolving!"
“Jellyfish have arrived!”
It was much, much later when we were nearing the very end of the walk, that my mind was really blown. As we approached the marker for the end of the walk, he whipped out a tape measure from his pocket and laid it on the ground.
“Dinosaurs," he declared, pointing to one end of the tape, “and that's where early humans arrived.” His finger was mere centimeters from the very end of the tape measure; mere seconds at the end of walking for hours.
In that moment, I realised that everything I’d ever been taught in ‘history’ was captured in 4cm of human history; ignoring the story that had existed for over 460,000 centimetres before that. Zooming in even further, it was mere millimetres since modern humans evolved, since the Industrial Revolution and since our separation from living in healthy balance with the rest of nature.
Holding an appreciation of Deep Time helps me to keep a sense of humility and grace within my actions, recognising that I’m a mere whisp in a moment in time and to hold an appreciation of our very small place in the bigger picture of life.
NB: These spans of time are too much for our brains to comprehend without metaphors to support. There is now a Deep Time App which you can download and take the 4.6km walk yourself, accompanied by a story unfolding the evolution of Earth’s deep and awesome history.
For those wanting a more immediate entry point, this 2 minute video helps:
Finally, there’s Long Time. One of the biggest barriers to transforming our current paradigm is a result of short-term thinking. So many of our institutions work within time planning parameters of no more than 5-10 years, leaving no space for future thinking. Thinking in long-time helps to focus on horizons well beyond our own, acting as ancestors to help shape a future we won’t get to see ourselves.
So, which time-frame are you moving in today?
#deeptime #futureancestors #legacy #systemchange #history #slowtime #humility