Time is a fascinating thing. It is comprised of past, present, and future. How long is the present, though? How long is "now"?
Time is typically conceived to be a linear device that stores events, which can also be called "moments". It is comprised of past, present and future, which cannot occur at the same time. Paul Ricoeur stated:
'time has no being since the future is not yet, the past is no longer, and the present does not remain'
The present is now. Now is a word. Now is the thought you're having right now. But how long is it? Googling "How long is Now?" Posits that it might be 2-3 seconds in length. I think that now is an ever fleeting moment, gone as soon as we can comprehend its existence. My feeling is that now is something that is an ephemeral concept, forever fleeting, and something that can never be captured.
The Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska, put this very simply:
'When I pronounce the word future, the first syllable already belongs to the past.'
Look up, those words are now in the past. But, it is still "now". It's always now, but how can you depict it? You can capture "now" in a photograph. A portion of "now"; a slice of time, 1/100th a second of light, of a scene, in a specific location, or, if you're doing long exposure photography, 10, 25, 30, or even longer becomes the captured "now".
Is now something that is mutable? "Now", in a photograph, for example, can capture multiple "moments".
If you consider "now" as brain activity, from stimuli to thought, or perception of that stimulus, that's about 200 milliseconds, according to this article. Again, if you look at it from a physical universe side of things, its 10^-43 seconds. (The "amount of time it takes for a photon to do stuff")
I don't want to talk about how complicated physics can get, and whether things are discrete or linear. I remain fascinated by the concept of "now", the "present" and the most important question of all; does our cognition cause each of these things to be different for everyone, with our unique experiences and atomic make-up altering our perception of "now"?
The length of "now" depends on what you're observing and experiencing. If you're observing an event, like toast falling from a plate to the floor; that's a slice of time, and comprises of the bizarre concept known as "now". Each moment as the toast tumbles towards the ground, rotates, and inevitably lands buttered side down is also "now". So is your despair at the toast landing exactly as you'd expect.
Or, that moment another vehicle smashes into yours, because it ran a red light. That's a short, sudden "now"; but capture it on a high speed camera; and its a scrape, an impact, blunt force, its still trauma. The "now" is mutable, and suits its need based on the circumstances which it contains, and how they are presented / interpreted. Its a frustrating concept, and one that will continue to keep me awake at night.
This is the second post in a series on time; in which I am exploring profound things in my mind. Thank you for coming along for the journey.
