On the nature of Time: Mother of all.

              Time. The great equalizer of all things. Great and small, powerful and weak, peaceful and violent; all of reality is subject to the great leveler of every hierarchy. Time has long been understood by her rhythms. The moon waxes and wanes, the sun rises and sets, hours pass by, and in all these things we believe we see time. But to measure something is to have only the faintest glimpse of the thing itself. To measure is to know a thing by some characteristic, it is an obtuse ricochet of the thing. You would be right to resent the man who believes he understands who you are because he knows your body height.  This ability to measure time has given us a tremendous arrogance in how we relate to her. Humans have long made the attempt to control every thing we can touch, and in the modern world we tend to deny the existence of any thing which eludes that control. Time allows for neither option. She will not let go of  us long enough to allow us to pretend she may be a delusion. Yet with deft and graceful agility she slips through our fingers at every turn.  How long will we continue to be fools and attempt to tame her as if she were a beast of burden?

               The passage of time has been observed since it’s beginning by all that has life. It must be noted nearly every word in the previous sentence includes in its definition a relationship to time. All words and ideas which imply movement presuppose time, as all movements begin and end. One such word carries with it the weight of all experience: life. Try, if you can, to form a coherent sentence about your personal experience of life without using a word invoking the movement of time. This is no simple task. If existence itself is inextricably tied to time, we must approach a reevaluation of our relationship to time with profound humility, for in so doing we reevaluate our understanding of life itself.  It should be noted that the goal of this essay is to attempt a perspective on time from the point of view of humanity, as we are humans after all. We moderns make much of taking “objective” perspectives, however, it should always be remembered that the one having the perspective is you. And you are human; nested in a framework of knowledge and assumption which is far deeper than you can imagine.

               Let us start by outlining some of the ways in which we perceive time in our modern western culture. Most actions of the average human in America revolve around an accurate knowledge of the position of the earth in relation to the sun. I must arrive at work by 8 AM, I am allowed by contract just under 7.5 degrees of the earth’s rotation for a lunch break, and I leave work at 5 PM, or exactly 135 degrees of earth rotation from my arrival. Assuming a wage of $20/hr I will earn $180 for participating in my work for 135 degrees of earth rotation. We orient our society on our ability to have a shared, accurate measurement of the passage of time. However, time and her passage have nothing to do with the earth’s rotation relative to the sun. Long before humans learned to measure her rhythm via the movement of planetary bodies, time was weaving reality together. She was there at the birth of the cosmos, long before our sun began to shine.

               In The Courage to Be, a masterpiece from the brilliant Paul Tillich, America as a culture has a unique adaptation in her courage to respond to the fundamental anxieties of life. American’s draw their courage to live in the face of all anxiety from perceiving self as participating in “the productive process of history.” (Tillich, 2014) This is drawn from the drive to actualize the potential within oneself and the world, such that more potentials emerge. Thus, production is seen in and of itself as good, regardless of the product, and we engage in progress at all cost. This brilliant observation from 1952 bears out wonderfully in our post-modern America, where being without a job can lead to existential crisis in short order. It also sheds light on our dilemma of mass overconsumption and excessive lifestyle choices. Our wealthy and famous live in castles with more luxury cars than they can drive in a week, yet with increased affluence comes increased anxiety and depression, especially among youth. (Luthar, 2021) Production of goods and services creates wealth, represented in our world abstractly as money. America is having no small struggle surrounding the integrity of this abstract representation currently, a strong indication of the shaking of the American foundation of courage.  As individuals, most Americans gain wealth by exchanging their time for money. If not paid directly by the hour, we are paid by the year, there is no difference except the level of resolution.  Thus, we have directly equated material value to time, as the American proverb says, time is money.

               While there are deep problems with using production as the ultimate source of courage, it is not a shallow answer to the existential anxieties of life. Understanding how any human created thing is produced gives us a perspective into the nature of time. In order to produce any actuality from unstructured potential, human time must be invested. There may be exceptions with automated systems, but the systems had to be produced. A tree will never become a beautiful carved table with only the passage of time, it is the human participation with the tree over time which may produce said table. Therefore, time might be understood as space in which potential and actuality dynamically shift. From an individual perspective this means every moment is pregnant with potential, it is up to me to determine what actuality will be created out of it. The journey of life may be viewed as an endless stream of potentials which may be crystallized into beautiful art, or hellish chaos. The most significant singularity of potential is a human child. Weak, vulnerable, and incredibly slow to mature from a biological perspective, the child contains within himself the potential to become hero or villain of his story. He may become a saint in generosity, kindness, and goodness toward the world, he may become a devil of lies, abuse and harm toward others. Thus, the range of his character potential is the full spectrum from heaven to hell; so too is the potential of his creative force upon nature. One spends his life cultivating a beautiful garden to share with others, another commits himself to the burning of the forest to make war on his brother. Only time will tell who the child will become, for it is the shaping of the person.

               In the American perspective of time as potential, it is generally understood that successful actualization of time results in accumulation of wealth. We spend time to make money. This is the modern equivalent of the ancient rite of sacrifice. To sacrifice means, broadly, to forgo some present desire such that the future is better. (Peterson, 2018) Viewed from a symbolic perspective, the injunction in the Biblical Old Testament against sacrificing to false gods means to make a sacrifice to anything lower than the transcendent and Highest Good. Sacrifice to that which is not ultimately fulfilling leads only to disillusion and greater sense of emptiness upon the reaping of the sacrificial reward. It may be worth considering, is money the highest good you can imagine? Does it bring transcendent meaning to the lives of those who amass great wealth? What is your life worth?

                Time is the mystical container of the potential of who you could become. Rather than relating to time by the measurement of her rhythms, let us instead embrace the moments as opportunities to create reality. Let us no longer wish away time until some future pleasure or sacrifice her to material wealth and consumption. Look back upon the moments and days when you suddenly became more than you knew you could be, as some inner darkness crystalized into character. Pay attention to the possibilities of a moment, no matter how mundane. Ask not “how long until…?” Ask rather, how might I make beauty from this moment?

References

Luthar, S. C. (2021). Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Youth From High-Achieving Schools: Appraising Vulnerability Processes Toward Fostering Resilience. American Psychologist, 300-313.

Peterson, J. (2018). 12 Rules for Life . Toronto, Canada: Random House Canada.

Tillich, P. (2014). The Courage to Be (3rd ed.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.