Time
Time has been around since, well, the beginning of time. Whether you think the beginning was a deity snapping its fingers, the Big Bang, or something in-between, before the beginning of time there was nothing; or, at least nothing to experience and, arguably, no consciousness to experience it. This is typically referred to as a linear-view of time; there is a beginning, middle (execution), and end.
A linear-view of time is often compared to a circular- or cyclical-view; there is a beginning, middle (execution), and new beginning.
I’ve even heard of a spiral-view of time. A combination of linear and circular views. Imagine a spring standing upright. Time is the spring itself; however, if you take a vertical slice from the coil, events will not be much different within that slice, just the details.
It’s an attempt, if you will, to explain the concept of history repeating itself with a model of time that allows for repetition while simultaneously acknowledging that the War of 1812 was not the same as the Vietnam War.
Like all things, each view has its pleasures and pains.
A linear-view is helpful in capturing and reviewing history in discrete batches; however, viewing the past is often used as a way to try to control and predict the future, which is impossible. A circular view results in less emphasis on trying to control and predict the future and more emphasis on being in-sync with the cycles of time; however, you can become doomed to repeat the past. The spiral view is future-focused while viewing the past as unchangeable and the future as unknowable; however, this can lead to a fatalistic and hedonistic approach to life.
What view do you tend toward?
No matter which you lean toward, when it comes to your consciousness, to the best of our knowledge, there is a distinct beginning and end; a certain point before your birth and the moment of your death. This is your life time-box, otherwise known as lifetime, which is a limit, not a destination; meaning you could reach the end before your time has run out.
Whenever you give yourself an hour for a task, that’s a time-box. Just because you gave yourself an hour doesn’t mean you have to take an hour. The tension many feel with time is often grounded in pretty much the same fear. The fear of death or, more appropriately, a life not lived because none of us knows when our time-box will end.
Therefore, we spend time modifying diet, exercise, and sleep in the hope of getting more time compared to what we were given that we can spend later doing the things we want.
We want to spend time slower.
“Giving yourself an hour” is an interesting phrase because it takes time from a concept and tightly couples it to a method of measurement. One hour is one-twenty-fourth of a day. A day is one-seventh of a week. A week is roughly one-fourth of a month. A month is one-third of a season (or quarter). A season is one-fourth of a year. A year is one-nth of your lifetime.
Dividing things up this way makes time easier to grasp. (You might even divide lifetime by life-role; spouse, work, and so on.)
Time is neutral and democratic.
You can’t “buy more time.” You can’t “get time back” or “borrow time.” Your lifetime is an account. You have no idea what the balance is. You are constantly spending time, even while sleeping. And when the balance hits zero, that’s it. No overdraft protection. No loans to take out. No bailout of any kind (at least not yet).
The “good” and “bad” things you do may have little bearing on when you hit zero. People have lived to 100 years old while regularly smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. Others have died around 50 while living a healthy lifestyle, literally while exercising. Others have died in their 30s after living a life of excess having just decided to live a healthier lifestyle.
Living life is a role playing game made of probabilities with few certainties.
I think writer and singer Henry Rollins said it best when he said, “No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is lifetime. Go.”
Time is not the enemy, stress is. Put another way, our response to the passage of time is what ultimately ages us.
How is it a 30 minute meeting can be exhausting, frustrating, and all you want to do is leave? However, you can go to a two-day retreat where you cried, felt emotionally raw, and all you wanted to do is stay?
We say things like, “This meeting is taking forever!” No it’s not. It just feels like it. Conversely, people say things like, “I lost track of time.” Of that there is no doubt.
The latter is what I mean when I tell people I have no concept of time. Even when I do make the time to check the time, I usually don’t freak out or become tense. Kind of an “Oh! Neat, that’s what time it is” feel.
Ultimately, time is:
- presumably infinite and personally finite,
- universally constant and personally unique,
- neutral and democratic.
Time doesn’t want you to lose. It’s just operating the way it knows how.
Past
The past is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Josh Bruce, personal maxim
Many of us look to what we consider were our peak years and stay there or spend our lives trying to recapture them.
The high school football star who’s constantly trying to replicate that feeling in the present and future. The person who can’t bring themselves to form a new relationship because they’re still hung up on their previous one.
Still others look to the past as a way of gaining moral high ground in feuds: “I didn’t start it, you did.” Others look to the past as a way to control and predict the future; the concept of astrology is based on this.
Changing the past is impossible; we can only determine how to progress into the future, which is happening whether we want it to or not. Further, viewing past patterns may raise expectations, but it may not alter the probability of outcomes, which is the premise behind every weather forecasting joke ever. Finally, the farther into the past we look, the higher our probability of being wrong about what happened.
Imagine a horizontal line representing time. You stand in the middle. Spreading out behind you are two lines starting roughly from your head. They go from narrow to dramatically separated the farther away they go. The closer the lines, the more assured you can be your memory of a thing is correct. The farther apart the lines, the higher the probability your memory of the past will be incorrect.
Have you ever read something from someone, and it made you feel insulted or angry? Later you read it again or simply discover it was a misinterpretation of intent? Our brains are adept at molding our perception of the world and memory of it to match our expectations and emotions. No one has a monopoly on an objective view of history.
Present
The present is a fickle thing. Everything you just read or heard is in the past. And again. You’re in the present now. Nope, now.
You get the idea. The present is now. It is no longer than “that.” Only an experience can be longer than now.
The present is where reality is. The past is a memory. The future is filled with possibilities. Reality is right here and right now.
It’s not to say you shouldn’t come up for a breath now and again to survey the regions of the past and future, only that being in the moment offers solitude in a world that can be crazy and loud.
Future
The future is the past inverted and is based on speculation not memory.
Remember the horizontal line with the cone going from you to the beginning of your lifetime? This same cone, flipped horizontally, goes from you to the “end” of your lifetime. The closer the lines of the cone, the higher the probability you will be correct on what will happen. The farther apart the lines, the higher the probability you will be incorrect.
The uncertainty is what causes many of us to not appreciate change or deviation, which is seen as error. Our vision of the future must be the one that comes to fruition. Depending on the type of educational or household system you grew up in, your vision not coming to fruition could be seen as abject failure, which means you are also a failure. The fear of being wrong or failure has very strong emotions associated with it for many people.