Yesterday while reading a social network post, I came across the sentiment “time is an illusion.” Coming up on a six month mark of being on mostly raw foods and a year mark of a cancer diagnosis, I had to pull off the side of the road today to write the thoughts that came whirling through my head randomly this morning. I also concluded that I would have to agree that “time is an illusion.” I don’t believe this because Einstein and Plato thought so, although I believe that Plato argued that it was life that was the illusion, but splitting hairs, really what is the difference? Why am I counting the time? Does it really matter?
Let me explain my thoughts on this a little further. We are taught to gauge everything by calendars, and clocks, days, months, years, seconds, minutes and hours. There is rarely a moment that goes by that we aren’t looking to see what time or what day it is. We are always anticipating the next thing or thinking about something in the past, whether it be a holiday, an anniversary, an appointment, a class, who walked the dog last, what we had for dinner yesterday, well you get the picture. It is very rarely that we are in the moment existing and breathing now, that is because that moment is fleeting and gone just like that. Everything we have experienced in the past and things we experience now and our thoughts of the future are carried forward in time. If this is so, what really constitutes time?
As an example: this moment, now, that I am typing is gone forever, it can never be captured again. You can read about it in your space of time, I can read it too, but is it really time or just the illusion of it. We can’t capture time relatively speaking. We can capture moments in time with words and pictures, thoughts and videos.
In conclusion we can’t escape the illusion of time. Our past is only a collection of memories and most of the time the memories we draw from are not terribly reliable. Our future consists of thoughts and projections of a present moment which can’t be experienced until the present. When we delve into our thoughts on the future the accuracy diminishes even more than the past. The illusion of what will be is that an illusion. Now we are left with the present that changes as fast as every keystroke in this document and every word you are reading now. The last word is the past, which one is the present? How many more words will be in the future? Are you still with me?
Time as we know it on our calendars and clocks must have been invented to calculate the ever-changing now and how fast it changes, but can it really be calculated accurately? Do we just believe this because we are told so? It is an interesting thought to ponder. You can study Einstein, Plato and other physicists on their theories of time and space. You will probably end up a little more confused about it. You may understand it a bit more too, but that is part of the illusion, which no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape.
I guess though without illusion of time there might be some chaos and a little less order.
Kind of ironic this is written the eve before a celebrated holiday… how timely!
Peace and Love to ALL!
Remember to be thankful for the illusion of time!
N
rawlifeliving 