What is Time

 Einstein's theory of relativity holds that the faster an object moves, the slower time passes. This means that a spacecraft traveling close to the speed of light for five years, according to those on board, will return to an earth that has aged 36 years. Indeed, a photon traveling from a distant star to earth gets here in billions of years according to us, but according to the photon the elapsed time would be much, much less. This aspect of Einstein's theory has been experimentally confirmed many times, and it has practical applications when it comes to satellites and space travel. It is called "time dilation."

I point this out to show that time is not an absolute. It depends on the frame of reference of the perceiver. Not surprisingly, various cultures have conceptualized time in radically different ways. Ancient Jewish and Christian cultures saw time as a falling away from a paradisiacal past—namely, the Garden of Eden. Time has alienated us from a direct experience of beauty and truth, and we can reclaim that paradise only in fractured and partial ways.

In the West, since the Enlightenment and the philosopher Hegel, just the opposite view has usually held forth: the future is brighter and we're moving toward a time of more truth and goodness. This is the myth of progress, and is often tied to scientific and technological innovation. This myth, of course, has taken a drubbing in the past century, with nuclear weapons and environmental damage. It seems technological innovation can have the effect of just magnifying humanity's most horrific tendencies—war—and cause us to destroy our habitat and the habitat of the other large animals and plants. Nonetheless, the idea that the future will be brighter holds sway much of the time.

Other cultures see time as circular or a spiral. Each season repeats what happened the previous year. Each October, for instance, I put a shovel in my car trunk in case I get stuck in snow. I take it out in April. I also get out different clothes depending on the season, and I eat different foods. Every year repeats the same rituals, has the same basic pattern, and returns to the place of the previous year. Because every year brings with it changes, some cultures see time as a spiral, returning again and again but with some difference. It's a combination of the linear and circular models.

The philosopher Nietzsche believed in circular time. He believed that because matter is finite and time is infinite, there is an eternal return where matter will reconfigure in the way it did during this lifetime. That means that each of us will relive our life countless times, because matter can only form in so many ways, and given infinite time, it will reform in exactly this way. While there is a supposition of something like linear time behind this, it is ultimately circular. 

Another way of conceiving time comes to us from some Zen teachers. They consider time to be a continuous present, with the past a conceptual delusion and the future a conceptual delusion. All we have is the present, which is "formed," if I can use that word, by the always unfolding Whole. The present is all we have, and it is bequeathed to all beings and things by their absolute interconnectedness. Everything works together to open the present, which is continuously opening.

Why do I bring this up? It's to show that a clock does not measure an absolute, but a concept. Time is a social construction. It's not "out there" in any objective way. By realizing this, can we free ourselves from seeing things as wholly subject to time? I am not sure. What would it be like to not have conceptualized time as our undergirding? Just thinking about it makes me a little dizzy, a little anxious, but also exhilarated. It's exciting.

Of course, the ultimate pain of time is old age and death. There is no escaping this. I am almost 56, and I can feel my body aging as the days and years go by. Isn't this feeling evidence of some sort of objective time? Well, no. It's evidence of constant change, but it's not evidence that there is an absolute called time.

Perhaps our sense of time rests on the combination of memory and anticipation. These mental activities may create in us the sense of the past and the future. Indeed, time may be a result of memory and anticipation; time may not produce them. Perhaps we impose a concept of time onto the world that is derived from our mental activities of memory and anticipation. Cultures that believe in some sort of circular time or fallen time emphasize memory, and those that believe in a brighter future emphasize anticipation. But just because we have memory and anticipation does not mean time, as we usually conceive of it, is somehow absolute. It is real, of course, because concepts are real. By "absolute," I refer to a reality outside of our conceptions.

Certainly, there is change. And certainly our memories constantly reconstruct the past in the service of present needs, so that our memories are not simple repositories of the past. The past is always reconstructed. If you don't believe me, look at how the discipline of history constantly reconstructs what the past was. So the past is a construction of memory and history and is constantly changing. The future is a result of our anticipations, and cannot be fully known, only predicted. That leaves us with the present moment, and what is that? A doorway from constructed memories to constructed anticipations. 

Where are these memories and anticipations? Some may claim that they are in neural networks in the brain, and there is something to this claim. Certainly, the material element of memory and anticipation is in these networks. But this is not how I experience either memory or anticipation. Before any neural network can be established, there is the relationship outside of me with other people and things. Memory results from my listening to other people, interacting with them, responding to them. It also results from my doing the same with things. 

I don't believe either memory or anticipation is somehow encased in my brain. They come from outside, in my interactions with the world. Consider consciousness. We are aware of ourselves, internally, in times of pain and discomfort. Otherwise, consciousness is engaged with people and things. It's all over the place. Perhaps consciousness is not the unusual result of matter coming together in human form, but has been here all along, and is part of the very make up of everything. Rarely do my thoughts, ideas, and visions seem to come from within me. Just as the ancient Greeks believed poetry came from the muses, outside the poet, I believe thinking and ideas are relational.

What's more, most of this memory and anticipation takes place beneath the level of intention. When I reach for a coffee cup, I rarely think, "Now I am thirsty and wish for more coffee, so I will reach for the cup." Instead, I just do it, spontaneously. The coffee cup, the coffee, my thirst, and my reach work together, relationally, beneath and before any deliberate intention. This level of consciousness, sometimes called the "prereflective," is where I believe I mostly reside, and it's where I see most others residing, too.

Living in time is a dance responding to the symphonies around us, in the form of memories that reach out far beyond us, and anticipations that also reach out in that way. This, of course, is another conception of time. Is it better than others? I don't know. I do know that thinking in this way gives me a sense that I am at home in the world, that it is part of me and I am part of it, and that we all move together in profound ways well beyond our capacity to know.

This movement, of course, sometimes leads to conflict and even violence. Part of this movement is carnivores eating other animals. So I am not seeing the world as more harmonious than it is. I am seeing it as complex, multifaceted, but, ultimately, absolutely interconnected.