Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman

I first read this book years ago, I know not when, but I loved it immediately and completely because now upon rereading it, it still doesn’t fail to move me to look at my world and my life in a different light.  It remains one of the most memorable books I have ever read, and I’m so glad I lived now in this age when I am able to experience it.

It gives us a series of dreams by the young genius Einstein, who at that time was formulating his new theory of time.  In his dreams, time takes on new forms, other manifestations.  What would life be like, for example, in a world where time is circular?  We would be forced to relive our lives over and over again, going back to the start and repeating the same for any infinite number of times.  What would we do, for instance, in a world where if we move to a certain point, time will gradually slow down little by little until it stops completely?  It could be that some of us will be compelled to move toward that place so that we could stop time and remain happy forever.  How would people live in a world where the farther you are from the center of the world, the slower time moves?  How about in a world where time slows down the faster you move?  Come to think of it, the meaning of our lives – our joys, our sorrows, our successes and failures – all of these are inextricably tied to the time that we have available to us.  We cannot escape time, so we live by it.  Perhaps we could all be happy in a world where time is irregular and one could randomly find himself thrown into the past or flung into the future.  What would you change?  Or would you try not to change anything at all?  In “Einstein’s Dreams,” these worlds are presented to us as only someone with Einstein’s imagination could give.

While reading it, I was made keenly aware of the balance of life, and how time moves everything around us.  I was made to think about the decisions we make, and what we think of as important.  In a world where time is linear, regular, measurable, and finite for each life, like ours, what should really matter?  It should have felt difficult to imagine these worlds, but it wasn’t.  In fact, it seemed so simple to look from our world into those dreams.  It was written so simply and honestly, and you knew that you could be any one of those people walking on the road, looking out the window, exchanging a loving embrace, or laughing with a friend.  How I felt reading the book is so difficult to explain.  It was like I was watching light moving across the pages of a book – slow, mysterious, and cannot be spoken.  It felt like I took a journey to those worlds to get a glimpse of another life I might be leading; and now I have only to come back to my own time, here in my own world.   Does it make me sad or happy?  This is the only world I have.  This time is mine, and so is this life.