UFOs and Time Travel

Yesterday I was talking to a guy at work who I didn’t know well, but my few encounters with him indicated that he was a good guy. I’ll call him Marcus. We were discussing Thanksgiving, and then families, and for the life of me I don’t know what we said that caused us to digress toward UFOs and time travel.

“I do research at home,” Marcus said, “and in the Pyramids of Egypt there is a carving of an alien ship hovering over human figures. In South America they’ve found pictures of aliens, too.”

I’d heard of these findings before, and enjoyed the idea that beings from another world had taught humans to build the pyramids of both cultures, but as much as I wish there was real evidence of it, fanciful pictures created thousands of years ago aren’t enough to convince me. I started to see Marcus in a more distinctive light. He was serious, he believed wholly that aliens had helped humans build the pyramids, based on these carvings. He didn’t say it with a sense of questioning, of dubious possibility. Something was handed to him online, and he ate it up, and now it’s a part of him.

Instead of trying to dissuade Marcus, I made appropriate references.

“I think it would make sense that two cultures that build pyramids, oceans apart, make the same sort of picture. Have you seen the movie Stargate?” That’s: the sci-fi, completely concocted movie focused on a plot, not based on science?

Marcus nodded, and now I wonder whether he considers that movie a part of “research” as well. He went on to say that time travel was definitely real, because he’d seen, (in his research), a video of women walking in the 1940’s, obviously on cell phones. On Facebook there was a slide-show of “proof of time travel” with old pictures of people dressed in today’s clothing and doing things that could indicate they’re using cell phones decades before they existed. Yes, I’d seen the same “research,” and it was not obvious to me. If a person did time-travel and cared enough about not being noticed to dress for the decade, why would they then use a cell phone? If that user was not a time traveler but was given the cell phone, why would a time traveler do that? But Marcus was convinced. Convinced enough to share his opinion with another without cracking a smile of mystery or wonder. If he was messing with me, he was doing it really well.

I’m relating this story here because it was an eye-opener to me. I mean, I know there are people out there who will believe whatever is put in front of them. I rarely, however, find myself facing that mindset in a conversation. I may have spoken to someone who believes we wouldn’t be experiencing (Earth’s natural cycle of) global warming at all if it weren’t for humans, but our conversation was about children or having visited the same town in Iowa, so I didn’t know they held this belief. When I have conversations with people I don’t know well, it’s usually about similar experiences or beliefs – or else I’m the one they end up thinking of as crazy because I’m so open about possibilities. (Such as global warming: I believe the planet goes through it naturally, but I also believe humans have caused it to happen perhaps more dramatically than it needs to. I don’t have a “one or the other” stance, I believe life is a mixture of occurrences, that very few life-sized results are from a definite, extreme event).

So, since I’m so open-minded, why do I think Marcus is crazy for saying that aliens taught humans? That’s not why I’m uneasy about talking to Marcus. Believe it or not, I am actually open to that idea, as “gray area” as it might be in my spectrum of beliefs. What makes me uneasy is that it’s not so remote in Marcus’ spectrum. It’s more toward the “white” side – the side of “yes, it definitely happened.” I have a feeling he has a dumbbell-shaped belief spectrum with most ideas amassed at the “yes” end and “no” end. I’ve slowly learned that many people need those definites in order to function in life. They need a “yes, it’s real,” or “no, it’s not,” because “maybe” is uncomfortable. For some reason, Marcus needs a “yes, aliens are really behind human cultural development,” rather than sitting firmly in the, “no, it’s not enough evidence, it didn’t happen.”

It’s a dangerous thing, being in one or the other extreme. Missing out on life’s wonders would be horrible if I had a dumbbell belief spectrum. The gray area is where wonder is for me, where mystery floats like a fog, where kids are raised right because I’m neither too strict nor too lax, where my love for my husband is tempered by not being too needy and not being too distant, and where I feel comfort for my late father because his spirit is neither completely gone, nor wandering around like a see-through body, but held near my soul like a voice reminding me of what he would tell me if he were alive. The gray area is where I keep thinking, because nothing is definite and things are always being analyzed. As life should be.