It Was Never Then

An essay on the nature time and the non existence of the past

Time is one Badass M**********r. It is enormous. Limitless. Infinite as the universe itself. If the universe has no beginning and no end, time also has no beginning and no end. If the universe begins at date certain and ends at date certain, time begins and ends at these same dates certain. Time sets the course of events. It is the stage on which all things strut their stuff.

Time is also by nature, continuous. It is ceaseless, unbroken, and uninterrupted. It does not have fits and starts. It does not come in discreet categories, though we say it does. There are three categories, and we all know what they are: past, present, and future. Sometimes, we divide the first and last categories into smaller units. We talk about the recent past and the not-so-distant future. Historians need to divide the past; otherwise they cannot tell us about the Early Medieval Period and the Late Renaissance. We know these are just convenient fictions, but we should not chastise the historians. They write interesting books, and we need some way of carving things up.

We also know that time moves ahead not behind, forward never backward. Our metaphors of time depict its forward movement. The worst of these is “Time marches on.” This is a lousy depiction of time. For one thing, it makes time seem effortful, and time is not effortful. It is also lumbering and clunky, and time is not like that at all. A better metaphor is “Time flies like an arrow.” Here, time is sleek. Certain. Irreversible. Forever hurtling to the future, mindless of the past.

But this metaphor also has its problems. For one, the arrow falls to the ground in a matter of seconds. Time doesn’t do that. It lasts much longer than a few seconds and it doesn’t plumet to the ground. And what lay behind the arrowhead? A long line. An infinitely long line. One arrowhead pulling an infinitely long line? In fairness, the arrowhead is not said to propel the arrow; it just points the way ahead. So what does propel the arrow of time? The twang of an archer’s bow? Please.

The best metaphor is “the river of time.” For one thing, it does not constrain the geometry of time. It allows time to wander. Time moves along any way it wants, and it may not want to move in a straight line. The river of time also moves slowly. Time can take all the time it wants. Of course, we do not know how quickly time moves, but probably slower rather than faster. Because time has wisdom, and given how far it has come and how far it must go, time is in no rush. Time knows it is foolish to hurry, to move with undue haste. Time also knows that if it went faster, it would just slow down anyway. Such is the relative nature of time. And it’s just a nice way to imagine how we pass the time, floating along the river. This is much better than riding bareback on a whizzing infinitely long line with two-thirds of a triangle at the end. So, the river of time it is.

There is something else we know about time: It is, at all times, now. We are in the present. We are always in the present. We have always been in the present, and we will always be in the present. This we know is true. We may not always be in the same place, but we are always at the same time. And that time is now.

But there are stark choices in the narrative of time. They are unnecessary choices, and we can easily avoid them, but they are there, nonetheless. One is this: What is more real, the future or the past? We can say they are equally real, that one is more real, or that the question is pointless. It is tempting to say the question is pointless, cast it aside, and move on. And we can do this. But if we wish to tell the story of time, it is best we visit the question.

What say you? The past? Yes, of course the past. We have hard evidence of the past. We can see it. It’s sitting right there in the Natural History Museum, and we can all go look at it. But we have no evidence of the future. There is no Natural Future Museum. So we can verify only the past.

OK. Then let’s go to the Natural History Museum and look at something from the past: a clay pot thrown and kilned in the year 482 A.D., somewhere in Mesopotamia. It’s sitting right there, right in front of us. Do we not see what is plainly before our eyes? Yes, we do. Can you show me evidence of the future? No, you can’t. So there you go.

But I can show you the future, as easily as you show me the past. It’s sitting right there, right in front of us: the same clay pot, thrown and kilned in the year 482 A.D., somewhere in Mesopotamia. In 483 A.D., the pot is in the past. In 481 A.D., the pot is in the future. And the clay pot over there from 687 A.D. It is as surely in the future any time before 678 A.D. as it is in the past any time after 687 A.D. It’s just a matter of perspective. Events do not halt; they continue. And they continue to continue, do they not? I await your retort. I see from your expression it will happen shortly in the future.

OK, you say, what about this: If the universe ends at a definite point in time, everything in the universe, including time itself, there is no future; all is the past. Fair enough. And if the universe begins at a definite point in time, everything in the universe, including time itself, there is no past; all is the future. So it’s a draw.

But I submit there is no past, none at all. Never has been. We agree that at any given time we are in the present, and that the present moves ahead not behind, forward never backward. People say, “The future is now.” Does anyone say, “The past is now?” No, because it isn’t. It never is. It never was, and it never will be.

One might imagine the present disposes of the past. That as we move ahead, the past is gone, entirely obliterated. But that is being too charitable to the past. Time is a reference point, and this reference point is always where it is: in the present. And the present is always joined at the hip to the future. It has to be; it has nowhere else to go. So the present does not dispose of the past. It can’t. It knows nothing of the past. The past is not gone. It has not been left behind. Because it was never there in the first place. It was never then.