I was thinking today about things that we take for granted, things that are so familiar and so engrained that we never think about them at all; things like time and distance. Time seems so obvious and so immutable – it is how we measure the passage of our lives. As far as we can understand, time flows in only one dimension – forward as we perceive it. But what is time? And why do we mark its passage as we do?

First of all, time is a perception. Our limited human senses tell us that we are born, grow, have whatever joys or sorrows mark our life, grow old… then eventually die in an unbroken stream of time. The same sequence happens again, as far as we can understand, for everything on and off Earth – it happens to animals, plants, institutions, empires, mountains, seas, continents, and the planets, stars and galaxies. And what makes that progression sequential is what we call time.

We measure time on earth in years and days. But these measures are valid only here on earth, this third planet of an ordinary star well out on one of the arms of a spiral galaxy. A day is what we call the measure of one revolution of the earth around its axis. If it revolved at a different rate, a day would be a different quantity of time, but it would still be a day. A year is what we call the measure of our revolution of the earth around the sun. Again if the earth were a little closer or farther from the sun the rotation around our sun would be a different amount of time, but it would still be a year. As an aside the distance couldn’t vary much, since the Earth’s climate depends on energy from the sun; a lot closer and the surface would be too hot to support life like ours. A lot farther away, it would be too cold to support, probably, life like ours.

So what? If the planet revolved differently or rotated around the sun differently, the periods that we describe as a “day” or a “year” would be different. The apparently rigid fact of their duration is only due to an accident of planetary formation.

I am not even going to get into weeks or months. Named after the moon and sun, Norse gods and Roman gods and emperors. What a mess!

There are more measures of time: hours, minutes, and seconds. Why are there 24 hours in the day? Why are they measured in two 12-hour segments? The two 12-hour segments can be traced back to the ancient Middle East. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians and others measured the day in two segments. These segments were equal because, at that latitude, day and night are roughly equal throughout the year. But why 12 hours?

Take a look at your hand, either hand, and count the segments of your fingers. You will discover, if you didn’t know already, that there are 12. We speculate that counting off the hours on the segments of your hand would give you 12 units. If the ancients had chosen to include the thumb as well in their calculations, we would likely be using base 14. So if our hands were jointed differently, with one fewer joint,  perhaps we would have two eight hour segments in a day and each segment would be longer than what we describe as an hour.

Why 60 seonds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour? We know that the Sumerians used the base 60 system. We don’t know why but it might be because 60 is very convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number that can be divided by one, two, three, four, five and six as well as by 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.

When we measure distance, the same kind of pragmatic approach seems to be involved. In the Imperial system, a foot is about the length of an adult male foot. My foot happens to be exactly 1 foot long – coincidence? I think not. A yard, which is 3 feet long, approximates the length of a human arm. The Imperial system has many other measures, too numerous to repeat here, which relate to agriculture.  

The metric system, widely used in the Western world, makes more scientific sense, almost. It was defined as 1/10000000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole measured through Paris. That was the French Academy of Sciences definition in 1791 ( it is now defined based on the speed of light).  But it too is based on the size of the earth. Different size earth, different size meter.

Computers are based, so far, on three number systems; binary (base-2), octal (base-8) and hexadecimal (base-16). That’s because when we started using devices to compute, the only way was to store data was as on or off . Yes or no. True or false – a  system based on two and two only options. This has been the premise on which every computer today is based. Octal has only 8 numerals: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 0. A ten (10) in octal is an eight in our familiar base-10 system. Hexadecimal extends octal by adding 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E and F. An F in hexadecimal equals 15 in our base-10 counting. A ten (10) in hexadecimal equals 16 in base-10. (I am not going to get into quantum computing – I don’t understand it at all). When you are gaming on your iPad, you are manipulating huge groups of ones and zeroes.

But so what? All these givens that underpin, measure and regulate our lives are either accidental – because of the planet’s size or rotation –  or else by tradition or decree. How much else in our lives is bounded artificially? What would be the impact if it were different? There’s some ideas for us to ponder.

This is a new experience for me. I am typing on a small keyboard attached to an iPad. The intent is that I will be able to use this lightweight, very small computer to accompany me on my travels, so I can use it for my blog. Since I don’t even have a smart phone, the interface with the iPad is a very new and somewhat disturbing experience.

When I think about my life, indeed any life, I am struck by how life is both fragile and robust at the same time. To illustrate my point, here are some examples from my own life about how the events could have been very different … and my life dramatically changed or very abruptly ended.

The Creek in Oakville

It starts in 1942 when I’m five years old. My mother, older brother – he’s seven – and I are living in Oakville, Ontario, on the Second Line. There is a little creek running through the back of the property and it is full of spring runoff, fast and deep. My brother and his friends have a little sliding game right next to the creek. They have a slippery muddy bit that they are running one foot on, while standing with their weight on the other. I ask if I can play. With some reluctance – they are older than me – they let me try. On my first attempt I am so successful that I slide right into the creek. It is over my head and I remember standing on a large piece of ice on the bottom, looking through the water – it was greenish blue – and being very surprised. Not afraid, not cold, there was no time, but very surprised. My quick-witted brother grabs a small branch from a bush, hooks the hood of my snowsuit and brings me to shore where the boys drag me out of the water. They take me up to the house where, wonder of wonders, I get to stand on the kitchen table, fully clothed and dripping wet, while my mother strips me down and dries me off. I have been living on borrowed time ever since.

Lesson: Don’t play with the big kids unless you are as competent as they are.

Truck Rollover

Fast-forward about 10 years. I am 15, in Army cadets at high school in Scarborough. A buddy, Joe Czaja, lives on a nearby farm and can drive his father’s stake body truck to cadet meetings in the evening. There are seven of us, three in the front seat and four of us, including me, in the open back of the truck. An inexperienced driver, he tries to take a turn too fast and overturns the truck. Those of us in the back are flung up out of the truck onto the roadway. I land on my hands and knees, roll over and see the truck continuing to roll I’m coming down on me. I roll frantically out-of-the-way, while the truck ends up on its side. Incredibly, no one is injured. We help Joe right the truck, which is a little banged up, and continue home. He doesn’t get to drive us to cadets anymore.

Lesson: Don’t ride in the back of a truck driven by a really inexperienced driver trying to impress his friends.

Cycling Error

It is a year later. With a friend on his bike, I am riding my bicycle – a one speed utilitarian model – along Kingston Road east of Toronto. The road is two paved lanes with gravel shoulders. No bicycle lane. It is a weekend and traffic is very busy so I am keeping well over to the right. Suddenly my front wheel slips off the pavement onto the gravel, where the wheel turns sharply left and forces me back, out of control, into the traffic. I hit hard on the right rear door of a passing car. I can see the horrified eyes of the nearest passenger as I careen off the car into the air and fly off onto the gravel shoulder, my bicycle cartwheeling beneath me. I can see all this in slow motion. The car screeches to a halt and they ask if I am okay. Other than a little road rash on my hands and knees, I am unhurt and the bicycle is still usable. A second earlier or later, I would have been between vehicles and would likely have been run over by at least one car.

Lesson: If you are in a collision between a bicycle and a car, the car ALWAYS wins.

Level crossing

Two years later. I am a senior in high school in Scarborough and I am coming home late at night from some event in the back seat of a taxi. It is winter and extremely foggy as we travel west along Eglinton Avenue. There is little traffic. There is a busy level crossing on this stretch of Eglinton. It is the main line between Toronto and Montréal, two parallel tracks cutting Eglinton at an angle and the trains are fast as they cross the road. As we approach the crossing the driver and I both hear the train’s whistle but cannot see the headlights until we are on the tracks. The train is almost upon us, approaching fast from the left, the brilliant light illuminates the interior of the cab space … and there is nothing we can do except keep moving. As the taxi clears the tracks, the train rockets by, buffeting the car. We both think that the train has struck the car, so the driver stops and gets out, as do I. As the train disappears into the fog we see that the taxi is undamaged. We get back in and the driver slowly, carefully, thankfully drives me home. This near miss frightens me. There is enough time to contemplate the onrushing death and there is absolutely nothing that I can do. I have no control and am powerless to change the outcome. I think that I have never been closer to death than at that moment.

Lesson: Sometimes you are just in the wrong place and the wrong time … and you are powerless to do anything about it. Accept whatever fate brings you.

The movie “The Way’, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring Martin Sheen, is about one man’s physical journey on the Camino de Santiago and about his interior journey of discovery. What he came to was the understanding and tolerance of others’ shortcomings and, perhaps more importantly, an understanding and tolerance of his own.

I told you that I already have a propensity to like this movie, since it is over much of the same route that I walked a few years ago. I saw it last Saturday and I like it a lot. Wonderful scenery that I remember well. It is moving, emotional, deep, funny in places, hokey in a few places, but overall, a movie that I would recommend and that I will see again. When it comes to a movie house near you, take the time to see it. I think that you will be glad that you did.

Cheers,

Guy

Just last week I watched a documentary, I Came to Testify, on TV. It was one of the most difficult things that I have ever watched and was the first of a series of five hour-long documentaries about Women, War and Peace. It was about the war in the Balkans and the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war against Muslim women. It tells the story of 16 Muslim women who not only survived months of rape, torture and virtual slavery, but who testified at the first international trial at which the crime of rape was defined for the first time as a crime against humanity. Somewhere between 10,000 and perhaps 50,000 women were raped by “Christian” soldiers and paramilitaries. It was not about sex; it was about power. But then, rape almost always is about power.

The stories that these 16 women told were awful in their details and in the apparent nonchalance with which the men holding them captive treated them. Part of the horror was that the town in which this happened was a town in which there had been no religious divide before the war. The people doing this were neighbours who had lived, partied, shared family lives as part of their normal activities. No-one believed that this town could be torn apart, but it was. Neighbour turned against neighbour and the worst in many people was brought out.  It is always there, under the surface, in you, in me, but we keep it under control. It’s called civilized. Then Serbian leaders, anxious for power at any cost, started to broadcast about the differences between the Serbs and the “others”. Over time the message sunk in and people were encouraged to bring out their inner beast.

And I remembered … When I was a young combat arms officer in the Canadian military, we used to kid about the (not real) R&P troop. R&P stood for Rape and Pillage. And we used to crack jokes about the slow soldier who kept getting the sequence wrong: “No, no, Corporal Smithers, you always burn last, not first. Rape and pillage, then burn.” We always thought it was very funny. That was likely because in our wildest dreams, we never thought that we or any of our soldiers would conduct themselves in such an appalling way. We were professional soldiers and very proud of that fact. Treating civilians – any civilians, ours or theirs, in such an inhuman way was far beyond our understanding. Yes, we knew that it had happened in previous wars, but our war would be different. We were so incredibly naïve. We even used to joke with our equally young wives, “When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.”  They laughed too, but the laughter was brief and polite,  not more. I think that they understood that we were, in fact, just joking, even if it was in dreadfully bad taste.

Then came Vietnam and the horror stories out of that war were dreadful. We still did not believe that our soldiers could be like that. But our jokes about the R&P troop indicated to the troops that the officers thought that it was all a joke. Older now, I realize that our behaviour was far beyond unprofessional. It actually encouraged the people around us to think of rape as a joke.

Watching the women testify at the trial, even though their faces and voices were disguised and they spoke through a translator, the devastation wrought on them was papable. It was dreadful to watch … and to watch the impassive faces of the three Serbian officers who were charged with the crimes. Their defence was that the sex, if it happened at all, was consensual. Consensual, with you holding a weapon and the women penned in buildings like cattle.

I wish that I could go back and undo what I did, unsay what I said, actually be a professional instead of a casual, shallow, callow youth who had no idea just how brutal the world could be. I can’t do that, of course, but what I can do is make sure that I never allow that kind of joking talk in my presence ever again. And that is my intention.

Good news:  “The Way”,   a movie about the Camino de Santiago, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen, is coming to Ottawa!  Special preview showings are scheduled for 3 November and 11 November at 7 PM at the Colisuem on Carling Avenue. If this interests you, make an effort to be there. I heard Sheen interviewed on CBC Radio and he said that this was his best work in 30 years, so it will be instructive to see what he makes of the Camino. I am going on the 11th of November.

 In the soon-to-be-released movie, The Way, Martin Sheen’s character goes to Spain to retrieve his only son’s ashes after his son, in his 40s, is killed in a storm in the Pyrenees on the first day of his pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. Then in a change of heart, he decides to walk the Camino himself, carrying his son’s ashes with him. That’s the fiction, the story-line in the movie.

 Here are some facts: When I was on the Camino myself, a British pilgrim, about 50, died on the first day of his pilgrimage … in a snow storm in thePyrenees.

After I finished the walk, a Dutch pilgrim in Santiago told me about a couple he had met. They were “a middle-aged couple whom he meets about fifty kilometres short of Santiago, who are each struggling with what is obviously an exceptionally heavy pack. When he asks them why, this story unfolds. Their only son had decided to walk the camino and had planned and prepared. He had walked a great deal, he had collected his gear, and was all ready to go when he was struck down with cancer, and was dead within three months. The parents decided to walk the camino in his memory . . . and to carry all of his gear between them, as well as their own. They will walk to Santiago, then to Finisterre and will give their son’s gear to the ocean.” (excerpted from A Journey of Days).

Finisterre is where, in the movie, Sheen’s character intends to leave some of his son’s ashes.

I haven’t seen the whole movie yet, only the trailer, but the path that Sheen walks is the genuine thing and I recognize many of the locations. I am thinking that The Way will be well worth seeing. I know that it will be showing in Canada in Vancouver and in Toronto starting in November.  I recommend that you find a location near you and plan to see it.