A Woulda-Been Day
- Melissa
- Jan 7
- 2 min read
I'm about to put this website live and tell folks about it -- hopefully by the end of this week. I'm happy I worked on finalizing it today, because today is a woulda-been day of epic proportions.
Today woulda-been my 23rd wedding anniversary. But instead I'm 11 months divorced.
This reflection isn't about that per se. More, this reflection is about how I once attended a session at a conference and they were discussing a language and where linguistically the people placed time in the body. I wish I knew the country, culture, or language name. I know it started with a T, was not a language I had heard of, and I think it was in southeast Asia. I know I have notes about it buried in a journal somewhere, but there's no way I could find it if I tried.
The presenter was talking about how in our culture (and many others) we place the future in front of us, and the past physically behind us. We "look forward" to tomorrow, we leave things "behind" us in the past, and the like. For people who walk and believe they move through linear time, this makes sense.
The other culture used words from the forehead and sternum to talk about the past, and words from the spine and back to talk about the future.
It's disorienting to think of the past as in front of us and the future physically behind us. But it makes sense. We can SEE the past. It's manifesting the present right here before our very eyes. The future, however, is unknown. It's lurking where we can't yet see it (or ever see it actually). Events we couldn't see coming pop up out of nowhere and surprise us.
That makes so much sense.
Every day is a manifestation of all the past that went before (time wise) and now it's before us, out where we see it in the world. And every second can only be one way (disregarding a multi-verse theory that is). And since there is only one way each moment can be, there are infinite woulda-beens for this moment. Today woulda-been my 23rd anniversary if things had been different. Also, today woulda-been my 2nd anniversary if things had been different. Or my woulda-been death day. Or my woulda-been graduation from Harvard medical school day (HA!). Or my woulda-been meet Selma Hayeck in a Peruvian museum by accident day. Or or or.
So, as this particular woulda-been day is bringing up all sorts of feels, I'm going to think about my past that I see laid out in front of me, the accumulation of all those infinite possibilities that have me sitting at this desk, in this snowy mountain town, eating mint Oreos my kid bought me for my birthday, working on this website.
The past is not gone. It's all contained here in this bubble of the present moment.
I loved this recent article in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/how-much-does-our-language-shape-our-thinking
This is a fascinating question! It sounds like your friend is describing the Aymara language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes in South America.
While your friend remembers a language starting with "T" and from Southeast Asia, the description of how time is represented aligns perfectly with Aymara. It's possible the "T" refers to a different detail or was misremembered.
Here's why Aymara fits the description:
Past in Front, Future Behind: The Aymara people conceptualize the past as being in front of them and the future behind them. This aligns with their belief that the past is visible and known, while the future is unseen and unknown.
Body-based Time References: They use words related to the front of the body…
I asked Gemini for you: https://g.co/gemini/share/8204a480e0e2