So you want to time travel? It will be easy if you start with a memory. I like to do it in the dentist chair, when I wish to be far away from what is happening inside my mouth. I seem to be able to care more about sticking with the memory, and the distraction helps the time pass quickly.
When I was small, I had a lot of bad dreams. I would yell for my mother, and she would come and sit on the side of my bed. We had four bedrooms in the house, and my sister and brother had rooms across the hall. My room shared a wall with my parents. Mostly I hated that. I could hear them making grown-up love noises and felt grossed out, or I worried they would hear the small blue transistor radio that I played under my covers after lights out.
After my bad dream, my mother would tell me to think happy thoughts. She’d usually suggest that I think of a vacation that we took that I liked, which was all of them. Some nights I would fall back asleep with my mind on my fun Alabama cousins, who didn’t wear shoes, acted a little naughty, and laughed a lot. Sometimes I fell asleep as I rode my bicycle along the ocean boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey.
The hardest part for you to time travel is that you have to take all your brain cells, and put them in another location. You have to recognize how the fun spot smells, listen to the sounds, move your body in your mind's eye according to whether you are walking, riding a bike, or driving a bumper car. You have to actually be in another spot totally.
Once you can do that with a memory, you can start to do the same exercise when you want to see the future, or if you want to connect with someone who has passed on. I looked at recent pictures of the back of my head from my son’s wedding. With shock, I remembered my grandmother’s hair. I used to wonder why it was so frizzy. When I saw the pictures, I realized mine was the same frizzy only not dyed black. I stopped hating my old lady hair. My grandmother used to complain about hers, and I realized hers was also most likely inherited. Neither of us have control over that one. Suddenly I was with her, watching her get ready to go out and listening to her beautiful voice. She felt alive.
Good luck with your time travel. It’s like flying in an airplane. In order to feel comfort, we have to let go of trying to control what is going on. Let another person manage that plane, just like when we were all young. I asked a 10-year-old piano student yesterday, where is your next trip? He vacations a lot. He shrugged. He knew they would go somewhere, since it’s summer, and he always had fun.
Don’t get uptight
when you time travel. Just try to float and have fun.