“The past is singular, while the future is myriad.”
When we look at the past, it seems self evident that it is fixed, over and done with: it went the way it went, the end. “The moving hand, having writ, moves on” and all that. On the other hand, when we look at the future, it seems there are myriad possibilities. We never know for sure what will happen tomorrow. “The best laid plans of mice and men”… As for the present, it is where we are, always. According to some spiritual teachers, the present is all that there is.
But are these separations real? Faulkner said “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Each one of us is shaped by our past, and this is true not only individually, but collectively as well. Since the past does live on in us, we can infer that (a) it is not dead, and (b) not being dead, it is not past.
As for the future, although it is not completely predictable, it is certainly shaped by our vision. If we believe something is not possible, then we will not try, and the thing does not happen, reinforcing our belief that it is not possible. But if we believe something is possible, we may then work towards that thing, and then it may actually happen.
The present is where we experience our lives. But what is it? If we take it as an instant, that begs the question, how long of an instant? A second? A millisecond? A nanosecond? An infinitely small division of the flow of time? Or is it, as Alan Watts argues, a longer division, one that necessarily allows for the perception of motion. He makes the analogy to a wave: a wave is defined by its crest, and by its slough. If you slice the wave right at its crest, you don’t have a wave at all. It needs its high point and its low point. So it is trickier that we may think, to define these things.
There is another aspect to past, present and future than just the scientific or even common-sense definitions, and that is the subjective experience of time. As mentioned earlier, our present is informed by our past, both collectively and individually; and similarly, our future is shaped by our present beliefs and intentions. But is the past shaped by anything? Most would say no, it just was the way it was. If we subscribe to a purely scientific way of looking at time, this seems an unavoidable consequence of the directional flow of time.
But what if, in our attempts to divide time up, we are missing something fundamental about the nature of time itself? What if time is more unitary, more holistic than an arrow flying forward that can be reduced into its measurable components? We have all had the experience of time seeming to flow faster, or slower, at different times in our lives, or even at different times of a single day; yet the clock keeps on ticking, objectively, at the same rate of speed. So we see that while science defines time in a strictly objective way, humans experience time subjectively.
And here is where we get to the question of facts vs. truth. Facts are one aspect of truth; but truth is larger than facts. Facts are objective, and can be verified independently; while truth includes facts, but must also encompass our subjective experiences as human beings. As human beings we try to make sense of our experiences and find meaning in our lives. We create narratives and myths and religions in our quest to understand our individual and collective experience, and these include a moral dimension, which seems an essential component of meaning for our lives.
Ah well, I have digressed a bit. The main point of this essay is a contemplation on the nature of time, and whether it is really divided into its component parts the way we normally think of it. I have always had some difficulty with the spiritual concept that there is only the eternal now; because we see that we are born, we live and we die; we have stages in our lives: birth, infancy, childhood, teens, adulthood, middle age, old age and death. How can anyone argue that only the present exists? It is true that at any given moment of our lives, we are in the present. But if we take that to its logical extreme, then we will not make any plans, and that would lead to extreme dysfunction — how can you keep an appointment if you have no calendar and no clock? It seems absurd.
On the other hand, we do see that the present is shaped by the past, and the future is shaped by the present. That leaves the past, as noted previously: can it be shaped? It seems to me that it can. We know that psychologically, people can make breakthroughs in their lives by regarding their past differently. It does not change the facts of what happened, but it can change the meaning. How we regard our past may have a material effect on our present, and by extension, our future. It seems to me this could be a fruitful area of inquiry, for an individual and for us collectively.
So if past, present and future can all be shaped; if the subjective experience of time is as important as the objective measurement of time; if time is holistic rather than divided; then maybe, in a sense, we can see that the present is all that there is — i.e., the present is not a separate instant, but rather it includes the other components in it, and we are always touching eternity. As Plato put it: “Time is the moving image of eternity”.
Well this is long enough, so I will sign off for now.