Chaos Theory, a beautiful science, tries to instill in us that the perfect shapes of Euclidean geometry like straight lines, circles, cones, cylinders, are only human imagination, and do not manifest in nature. They are just references we use to measure our surroundings. In fact, you can't even draw these shapes if you tried. No machine can ever produce a straight line, since drawing a line would entail giving it a thickness, and a thickness means it's not a 'line'. Further, every machine, no matter how refined, always deviates from its design trajectory.
So the drawn line will have a varying thickness, as well as deviations from the mathematical formula for a line, so, whatever it is... the drawn line is not a 'straight line'.
So if neither man made machines, nor nature produce straight lines, or straight anything - if we apply this concept to 'time' as we think it is ---
----then time flowing at a constant speed, in a 'straight line', progressing neatly from one year to the next -- this might not be true.
Time might be twisted, discontinuous, broken, looping, zig-zagged etc.
And if indeed 'time' has the above mentioned bizarre nature, it only means that the flow of events may not be a neat linear chronology that follows cause and effect.
i.e. the dream perspective... that mystics keep talking about.
Whatever this universe is, it's not what we are traditionally trained to think it is.
I have pondered parallel lives often...and I feel that in case the flow of time is not a 'straight line', and it doesn't look like it is, then there is no reason why time can't flow in parallel streams. That can converge, diverge. Converge again.
Perhaps time can be likened to a river. Has a flow but only if you are in it or observing it from close range. And like a river, consists of meanders, multiple streams, creeks, brooks, rivulets...Recommended:Is Time a Straight Line
