Hey!
2015 is coming to an end and we are heading towards 2016! PAUSE! Is it really the case? YES, if you speak in terms of ‘clock-time’ and NO if you speak in terms of ‘experiential-time’.
It is interesting how tightly the concept of time is coupled with ‘life’, such that we live-by-the-clock, so to speak.
The question to ponder is: Does life really happen in ‘clock-time’? or as John Lennon sang, “Life is just what happens to you when you are busy making other plans”?
If you think about this, life in the real sense is what you have lived, what you have experienced and what experiences you have shared.
So, ‘clock time’ is nothing but a cultural convention which helps us manage everyday life. It helps you bake your cake, so to speak.
When we relate life to ‘clock-time’, we stop experiencing life.
With such tight coupling of life and the concept of time, we like to think about our life as past, present and future. This leads to the cause-effect relationship which leads us to logically reason that our present is caused by our past!
Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”.
In other words, the past helps us, we can make some sense of our present in terms of the past but it also makes us anxious about our uncertain unknown future! But this is only the case when we think about ‘life’ in terms of ‘clock-time’.
We exists-in-time, but we do not live-in-time!
Time is not something that we have or do not have enough of. It is not a commodity. Similarly, life is also not a commodity that we can have more of or less of, it is an experience, an experience in the NOW.
Life is a continuous present. It is ‘this-moment’, the NOW. When we relate life to ‘clock-time’ we stop living, we stop experiencing life.
Life is not ‘clock-time’.
The past is the-past-in-the-present and the future is the-future-in-the-present. Life is the sum total of these present-moments, these experiences, the memories that you have of these experiences. The episodic memories or flash-bulb memories. Living is creating memories, so to speak!
We exists-in-time, but we do not live-in-time!
Wishing you a very happy living-in-the-present
Kind Regards,
Tejas Shah, MSc. (Psy)
Psychotherapist at Healing Studio
Call +91 8286 952 960
www.HealingStudio.in