Time: A Changing Present

“If time is truly seen to be nonexistent, then living in the now is an inevitable consequence of that understanding.” — Rupert Spira

“There is simply constant change, continuous adjustment, and random selection in an eternal present.” — Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul

Runaway Imaginings

Few things in life are as revered as the human imagination, and for good reason. All of our great stories, works of art, systems of cooperation, and technologies were birthed and nurtured in the imaginings of human minds. Without imagination we would be an impoverished species, vastly limited in our possibilities. For many people, this connection—between imagination and human possibility—has made imagination a kind of synonym for limitless freedom; imagination can set a person free, whether they’re a student daydreaming in class, a single mother dreaming of a better life, or a prisoner of war dreaming of life back home.

However, because we idolize imagination we rarely appreciate how, more often than not, it leaves us feeling trapped. By imagining how the past could have been better, or how the future might let us down, we lead lives of anxiety in the present. We imagine that we could rest easy, in the here and now, if only the past or the future were to our liking. But since we can never change the past nor divine the future, such imaginings only cleave us from the present, which, of course, is the only moment we’ve got. In this way, imagination is more often tragic than it is beautiful.

At the core of this tragedy is imagination’s tendency to obscure the fact that it is always now.[1] For all our hopes, fears, regrets, and ruminations, nobody has ever stumbled upon a moment other than the present. But because we can imagine pasts and futures that feel real, we wrongly assume that past and future moments share a similar reality with the present moment. That is, we think of time as a progression of moments, most of which exist in the past and future, but one of which exists in the present. And no sooner than it arises does the present moment pass away, like a wave washing into the past while simultaneously flowing into the future. Thus, past and future seem vast reservoirs of moments in time, whereas the present seems vanishingly small.

But this way of thinking, in which past and future loom large while the present barely exists, is clearly wrong. The present moment is not some thin sliver of time, continually superseded by the future. Rather, the present is a perpetual moment, never ending but constantly changing. The present moment is the only thing that has ever existed, and what we think of as time is simply a way of describing change within this endless present. In this light, past and future have no reality in and of themselves, but serve only to track the many changes ceaselessly coursing through the now.

In failing to appreciate the omnipresence of now, we overlook the true meaning of life, which is to find satisfaction in the present. We’re so distracted by thoughts of the past and the future that most of us go through life seeking liberation from the present, rather than learning to live within it. We often feel that life is a series of problems to be solved, most of which lie in the future. And only by solving these problems can we find contentment. But since the present is all that exists, the only problem we ever have is how to skilfully inhabit the moment. This is true whether we’re historians studying the past, futurists obsessed with the future, or Buddhist monks trying to focus on our breaths.

Few topics are as clichéd as the importance of living in the moment. Nonetheless, we reliably forget to tend to the here and now. There are many reasons for this, ranging from our innate psychologies to our consumerist culture. And there are many ways of realigning ourselves with the present, ranging from meditation to psychedelics. In this essay, I’d like to focus on one of the reasons we overlook the present, which has to do with our conception of time.

As mentioned, our common conception of time is misguided (in that it cannot be right) and misleading (in that it blinds us to the ubiquity of now). By making explicit our faulty assumptions about time, and familiarizing ourselves with an updated model, we can pull our minds closer to the present. To begin, then, let’s consider time from a few angles, to dispel our conviction in the conventional model.

Time’s Familiar Arrow

We think of time much as we think of space. We say that time moves from the past to the future, just as an object might move from one point to another. To visualize time, we map out timelines, with past on the left and future on the right. And when imagining different times, we cast our minds backward to the past, or forward to the future. This way of thinking is so natural that few of us notice how we regularly substitute a concrete visual of space for the abstract nature of time. But upon reflection, it’s perplexing—how can time possibly move, and how can it have space-like qualities? If this is the case, then what does time move through (does it move through itself)? And what shape does time take (is it round, flat, or a line)?

We rarely question our model of time, but it can easily be flipped on its head. To see why this is so, consider causality. Conventional thinking holds that the past causes the present, and the present causes the future; that is, cause always precedes effect as we move through time. This way of thinking is valuable, because to understand the universe we must understand cause-effect relationships. But a person could just as fairly assert that the present causes the past, because without the present first arising, the past would never materialize. After all, the only reason that the past exists is because it was once the present—in other words, the present causes the past to exist![2]

The above issues provide reason to pause when thinking about time. Perhaps the most remarkable flaw in our notion of time, though, is that it ignores the fact that the present moment lasts forever. We generally think of the present as a brief instant along time’s vast continuum. And because time is seen as a near-infinite expanse, the present moment seems tiny by comparison. But this is a tremendous defect in worldview, which is both inaccurate and impoverishing. It implies that most of what’s real lies outside of the present moment, even though the only thing that’s real is the present moment!

A truly robust notion of time must account for the fundamental fact that it is always now. Although this fact is easy to state, it’s hard to fathom, so accustomed are we to our conventional view of time.

Therefore, let’s turn our minds towards a different conception of time, which better honours the permanence of the present moment. Under this new view, time is not some quality that runs from the past, through the present, and into the future; rather, time is ceaseless change in a perpetual now.

A Changing Present

 Nothing has ever happened outside of the present. For the past 13.8 or so billion years, it has been now, and it will be now for billions to come. When our solar system formed, it was the present moment; as life began and branched into its many forms, it was still the present; and every stage in human history has occurred within this same, everlasting moment. It was, is, and will forever be now, because now is the only moment that has ever existed.

Of course, the present moment undergoes changes, and it’s here that we’re led astray when thinking about time. For example, when considering cause and effect relationships, we generally think of past causes as leading to future effects. But cause and effect are just a way of conceptualizing the many changes that take place in the present. Neither cause nor effect can exist outside of the present moment, because cause only ever bleeds into effect within the present moment.

To get a better handle on this idea, imagine that you’re watching a baseball game, and decide to assess the point at which cause recedes into the past after the batter hits the ball. You begin with the point of contact between the ball and the bat: here, both cause and effect clearly exist in the present, as the force of the bat gets transferred to the ball. Then, as the ball leaves the bat, you get excited, thinking that the cause of the ball’s motion (ie. the hit) must now lie in its past. But upon reflection, you realize that the ball is not moving because of causes in its past, but because of causes in its present. That is, the only reason the ball is soaring through the air is because of forces acting on it now. The bat is not currently the cause of the ball’s flight, so you cannot actually say that the cause has faded into the past—the cause is still exactly where it has always  been: in the present. Contrary to your initial excitement, the cause of the ball’s movement never ended—if it did, the movement would also have ended. And once you understand this, your original goal (of determining when cause fades into the past) seems confused. Why did you ever think that a cause could be engulfed by the past when, by its very nature, cause permeates—and props up—the present?

Although we often seem to be moving from the past to the future, in reality we only ever move amongst a changing present. Causes in the past don’t effect changes in the future. Rather, causes in the present effect changes in the present, which lead to further change. Any time we imagine the past or the future, we are simply imagining what the present moment would look like were it arranged differently. And whenever we investigate the past, whether by digging up fossils, excavating archaeological remains, or peering into deep space, we are actually investigating the present, deducing clues about the ways in which it has changed. Our growing wealth of knowledge is a testament to the fact that causes never vanish into the past, but simply change forms in the present (if they vanished into the past, how could we ever learn from them?).

Relative Change

Some readers may object that this description of time misses the point. In equating time with change, haven’t we ignored time’s very essence, which is that it describes rates of change? Even if we all agree that things change in the present, since those changes can be measured in seconds, hours, or years, does it not make sense to say that we move through time at a specific rate? And if we move through time at a certain rate, doesn’t our conventional conception of time hold true?

This objection arises from a common misconception about the yardstick by which we measure rates of change. We generally think that changes take place because of the passage of time: seasons change because months pass, people grow old because years pass, and civilizations rise and fall because centuries pass. Under this view, time appears to be measured by a non-physical quality (call it seconds, hours, or years) which dictates the rate at which things change.

But this perspective is completely backwards. Time is not some metaphysical quality that runs parallel to the physical universe, dictating change from on high. Rather, time is simply a description of changes in the present moment. Time cannot be separated from the reality of the present, because every measure of time is defined in terms of physical changes in the present.

This notion is counterintuitive, but to grasp it we simply need to consider a basic question: how long is one second? Unless we refer to changes in the present, we can provide no answer. The official definition of one second is the “atomic second”, which is roughly 9.2 billion vibrations of a cesium-133 atom (previous definitions were in terms of astronomical changes). This definition clearly involves changes in the present, but seems a bit contrived, so let’s look instead at our perception of one second. At first, our feeling of time appears to exist independently of physical changes. We can close our eyes and plug our ears, yet still have a good sense of time. However, the only reason that we have an instinctual sense of time is because of changes in our physical brains. If our neural activity were changed, our perception of time would also change (as is the case when we sleep, take certain drugs, or are simply bored).

As these examples show, time does not exist independently of physical change – time exists because of physical change. Therefore, things do not change because time passes – rather, time appears to pass because things change!

Because time is just a way of describing change in the present, it makes no sense to say that time is absolute. Time is always relative to whatever change is occurring now. This means that we should expect time to flow differently depending on how change plays out. And in fact, this is exactly what modern physics has shown.

Black Holes and Revelations

Upon first hearing of Einstein’s relativity and the notion that time passes relative to motion, most people are left scratching their heads. When, as a high school student, my physics teacher taught us about time dilation, I remember turning to a classmate and whispering that our teacher must have lost it. But despite most people’s initial misgivings, we know beyond a doubt that Einstein was right and the passage of time is indeed affected by motion. This picture of the universe is extremely hard to square with our traditional view of time, in which an imperturbable timeline prescribes rates of change. However, under our new view—in which time merely describes change—Einstein makes a lot more sense.

As Stephen Hawking writes in A Brief History of Time, “the theory of relativity says that there is no unique measure of time that all observers will agree on.” In other words, time flows differently throughout the universe. Although this seems paradoxical, once we view time as a way of tracking changes that flow through the present, the paradox dissolves. After all, it’s easy to accept that context affects the ways in which the universe changes. And we can imagine different contexts—involving different forces, motions, etc.—that might stress certain parts of the universe differently.

As a vivid illustration of this point of view, consider black holes. Hawking tells us that upon falling into a black hole, we would “soon reach [a] region of infinite density and the end of time.” The end of time he says? How could this be so? Well, if black holes are truly infinitely dense, then they contain no room whatsoever for change to occur (because they’re packed so tightly that nothing can move). And since we now know that time doesn’t dictate change, but actually describes it, we can understand that where there is no change, there is also no time.

This same reasoning holds for the beginning of our universe. If general relativity is correct, then prior to the Big Bang (and the beginning of time) our universe was a point of infinite density, lacking the space for change. But once it began expanding, and changes could seep into the present, time came into existence.

The Long Now

 So, what does this mean for us? If the present is nearly eternal yet ceaselessly changing, what should we think of time? Should we abandon all thoughts of the future, throw caution to the wind, and lead lives of pure hedonism in the here and now, the only moment we’ve ever got? Certainly not, because although it is indeed always now, the present moment can change for better or worse, and we’d prefer that it change for the better. For this reason, our conventional view of time is useful.

By plotting various futures on our many mental timelines, we can envision hypothetical nows (ie. possible futures) to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Then, with these hypotheticals in mind, we can work towards bringing the best possible now into existence. But we often get carried away, focusing so intently on our mental models that we habitually forget to tend to the here and now. By persistently striving to change the present moment, we consistently fail to enjoy it.

When we appreciate the enduring nature of the present, we keep our striving in check. And by understanding that we can never step outside of now, we learn to live within it more skilfully. Most of the time, we offer some resistance to the moment, wishing that we were somehow in the future or the past. But once we fully grok that the present will always be here, we begin to see the counterproductive futility of our efforts to escape it. The world is as it is right now, and nobody can ever change that fact—so why not relax, if only a little?

[1]This Sam Harris clip is a good reminder of this fact.

[2]This way of thinking was first pointed out to me in this transcribed Alan Watts lecture, in which he describes the past as being like a ship’s wake, where the ship is the present, continually creating a new past.