Back To The Future was one of those delightful movies with a great cast, a solid story, likeable characters, and a bad guy named Biff.
The good guy wins, which is what viewers want, but the writers were savvy enough to create an opening for a sequel. That came four years later, with another coming one year after that.
Michael J. Fox was the star, along with the most excellent Christopher Lloyd. But perhaps the most compelling character in the series was a time traveling DeLorean (pictured above).
If you’re a fan of Back To The Future, you may remember that it required 1.21 gigawatts (GW) of electricity to power the DeLorean. If you happen to be an energy nerd — or just curious — check out this web site to find out how much 1 GW is. The solar panels would not fit on your roof.
If you traveled back in time in the western world, you would find a book on time travel that was written in 1733. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century may in fact be the first book in the genre.
Other time travel stories include Rip Van Winkle, and A Christmas Carol (Scrooge, et al). Of course Back To The Future is far from being either the first or last time travel movie.
Although it would be fun, you don’t need a DeLorean, to travel to and learn about the past. That’s good, because can you imagine the electric bill for charging one of those puppies?
There are two ways to travel back in time. One way is in your mind. The other is through books, including the Bible. It talks about the past and the future.
Joseph
It occurred to me recently that some of the most recognized names in the Bible start with J.
Jesus, Judas, and Job are names many people know. Jesus is, well, Jesus. Top of the list. Superstar. Judas is known for betraying Jesus, and Job is known for his amazing patience.
One other J person you might have heard of, even if you’ve never read the Bible, is Joseph. He was the guy with “the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.” (Fun musical, but I think the book is better.)
Joseph, so you know this part of his story, saved the nation of Egypt from starvation. He did that by interpreting a dream for Pharaoh (king of Egypt) that foretold seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Joseph was then put in charge of making sure the country and its people survived all 14 years. He succeeded.
Because of all that, Joseph was revered in Egypt. But time passed. Joseph and his sons died. Pharaoh died, and the Pharaoh after him, and other Pharaohs as well.
Then the Bible says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
(It’s too bad Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber weren’t around then to write the musical and help keep Joseph’s name alive.)
That particular Pharaoh was not a good man, and he later drowned in the Red Sea. But it seems to me that the first flaw we find in his character is that he was not a time traveler. He didn’t learn from the past.
It’s about now
To say there is a lot going on in the world today would be like saying a 1 gigawatt light bulb would be bright. Just as that would be blinding, our information flow is overwhelming. News is big business. People want to know, and media companies give us all that and more. We are flooded with information.
And of course most of it is bad news.
To demonstrate how burdensome all this is, think about the sense of relief you feel when you read a news story that is good.
And when there isn’t any new bad news, old bad news gets repeated.
Think of a recent news story. How many times have you heard it? The media keeps our attention in the now by doing that. Rehash the football game or golf tournament if you enjoy that. Rehashing the news, though, is almost always a poor use of our time.
Why? Because living only in the now keeps us from traveling in time. We use little to no time dreaming about the future or learning from the past. Of course it isn’t just the media. The very real demands of “now” are often important, but “now” is always better with occasional visits to the future and the past.
Only humans, as far as we know, can time travel. We can imagine things in the future and then decide if we want to go there, and how.
We can look back at the past and learn from the greats about how they accomplished things. And we can understand mistakes from the past (including our own) and not repeat them in the now.
These are amazing gifts. We should embrace them, practice them, and reap the benefits.
See into the future
We can, as I once wrote in a lyric, see into the future. We do that by looking into the eyes and hearts of the next couple of generations. But we should not live in the future, nor should we dwell in the past.
The mistake of younger people — Arthur Brooks says his MBA students do this — is to think mostly about the future. As a result, they miss the gift of the present.
The mistake some older people make is spending too much time in the past. Partly that happens because older people recall many times of great joy. Reliving those is not bad. Living in the past, though, is not good.
Time travel is something we all should do intentionally. Just don’t get stuck in the past, like Michael J. Fox almost did in Back To The Future, and don’t get lost in the future and forget to enjoy the journey that gets you there.
And no matter where you travel in time, always do good. It’s in you.
The advantages of time travel
Back To The Future was one of those delightful movies with a great cast, a solid story, likeable characters, and a bad guy named Biff.
The good guy wins, which is what viewers want, but the writers were savvy enough to create an opening for a sequel. That came four years later, with another coming one year after that.
Michael J. Fox was the star, along with the most excellent Christopher Lloyd. But perhaps the most compelling character in the series was a time traveling DeLorean (pictured above).
If you’re a fan of Back To The Future, you may remember that it required 1.21 gigawatts (GW) of electricity to power the DeLorean. If you happen to be an energy nerd — or just curious — check out this web site to find out how much 1 GW is. The solar panels would not fit on your roof.
If you traveled back in time in the western world, you would find a book on time travel that was written in 1733. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century may in fact be the first book in the genre.
Other time travel stories include Rip Van Winkle, and A Christmas Carol (Scrooge, et al). Of course Back To The Future is far from being either the first or last time travel movie.
Although it would be fun, you don’t need a DeLorean, to travel to and learn about the past. That’s good, because can you imagine the electric bill for charging one of those puppies?
There are two ways to travel back in time. One way is in your mind. The other is through books, including the Bible. It talks about the past and the future.
Joseph
It occurred to me recently that some of the most recognized names in the Bible start with J.
Jesus, Judas, and Job are names many people know. Jesus is, well, Jesus. Top of the list. Superstar. Judas is known for betraying Jesus, and Job is known for his amazing patience.
One other J person you might have heard of, even if you’ve never read the Bible, is Joseph. He was the guy with “the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.” (Fun musical, but I think the book is better.)
Joseph, so you know this part of his story, saved the nation of Egypt from starvation. He did that by interpreting a dream for Pharaoh (king of Egypt) that foretold seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Joseph was then put in charge of making sure the country and its people survived all 14 years. He succeeded.
Because of all that, Joseph was revered in Egypt. But time passed. Joseph and his sons died. Pharaoh died, and the Pharaoh after him, and other Pharaohs as well.
Then the Bible says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
(It’s too bad Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber weren’t around then to write the musical and help keep Joseph’s name alive.)
That particular Pharaoh was not a good man, and he later drowned in the Red Sea. But it seems to me that the first flaw we find in his character is that he was not a time traveler. He didn’t learn from the past.
It’s about now
To say there is a lot going on in the world today would be like saying a 1 gigawatt light bulb would be bright. Just as that would be blinding, our information flow is overwhelming. News is big business. People want to know, and media companies give us all that and more. We are flooded with information.
And of course most of it is bad news.
To demonstrate how burdensome all this is, think about the sense of relief you feel when you read a news story that is good.
And when there isn’t any new bad news, old bad news gets repeated.
Think of a recent news story. How many times have you heard it? The media keeps our attention in the now by doing that. Rehash the football game or golf tournament if you enjoy that. Rehashing the news, though, is almost always a poor use of our time.
Why? Because living only in the now keeps us from traveling in time. We use little to no time dreaming about the future or learning from the past. Of course it isn’t just the media. The very real demands of “now” are often important, but “now” is always better with occasional visits to the future and the past.
Only humans, as far as we know, can time travel. We can imagine things in the future and then decide if we want to go there, and how.
We can look back at the past and learn from the greats about how they accomplished things. And we can understand mistakes from the past (including our own) and not repeat them in the now.
These are amazing gifts. We should embrace them, practice them, and reap the benefits.
See into the future
We can, as I once wrote in a lyric, see into the future. We do that by looking into the eyes and hearts of the next couple of generations. But we should not live in the future, nor should we dwell in the past.
The mistake of younger people — Arthur Brooks says his MBA students do this — is to think mostly about the future. As a result, they miss the gift of the present.
The mistake some older people make is spending too much time in the past. Partly that happens because older people recall many times of great joy. Reliving those is not bad. Living in the past, though, is not good.
Time travel is something we all should do intentionally. Just don’t get stuck in the past, like Michael J. Fox almost did in Back To The Future, and don’t get lost in the future and forget to enjoy the journey that gets you there.
And no matter where you travel in time, always do good. It’s in you.
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