I have been thinking of writing something about time since the moment we entered into the New Year 2011. I often wondered at the question – what is new in the New Year? A day has 24 hours; a year has 364 days and a day is divided into day and night. What is really new in this? Perhaps this year calls me to understand that “I am in time” and there is “time for everything.”
The Bible tells us that the normal life span of a human being is 70 and 80 for those who are strong. The introductory chapter of the Ecclesiastes begins with the reflections of a royal philosopher. He begins, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” He goes on to say –
A generation goes, and a generation comes but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises… All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full, to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow…
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done;
There is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1: 4-9)
This reminds me of one of the verses from the Tirukkural,
You are on the path that has been walked by many great human beings before you. Your experience is not unique. Just keep the faith and continue choosing to go deeper and deeper within yourself. All of the answers that you are looking for are within you.
In his book, The Go Between, L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there – but why is the past so different from the future? Why do we remember the past, but not the future? In other words, why does time go forward? (Stephen Hawking, The theory of Everything, 97).
When Martin Heidegger first came to Vienna and visited Viktor Frankl at his home, he agreed with Frankl’s concept of the past. Heidegger autographed something in German in a picture taken:
Das Vergangene geht;
Das Gewesene kommt
The English translation of it is:
What has passed, has gone;
What is past, will come.
In Logotherapy, “Having been” is also a mode of being, the safest mode. In the phrase “being past” Logotherapy places the emphasis on “being.” Frankl was questioned by the transitoriness of human life. He says,
The transitoriness of life cannot destroy its meaning because nothing form the past is irretrievably lost. Everything is irrevocably stored. It is in the past that things are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. Whatever we have done, or created, whatever we have learned and experienced – all of this we have delivered into the past. There is no one, and nothing that can undo it (Frankl, Recollections, 29).
For St. Augustine time is the “Present” – present of things past (memory), a present of things present (sight) and a present of things future (expectation). He further says about time:
If nothing passed, there would be no past time
If nothing were approaching, there would be no future.
If nothing were, there would be no present time.
Frankl was acutely aware of the transitoriness of human existence and he asks how one can find meaning in life when everything seems to be passing. He says, “Face to face with life’s transitoriness we say that the future does not yet exist; the past does not exist any more; the only thing that really exists is the present.”[1] It is in the present moment that one qualifies life and seeks meanings to fulfill conscientiously and responsibly. He does not reduce the three aspects of time – past, present and future into one. His understanding of the “time” is different from that of existentialism[2] and quietism[3] following from the traditions of Plato and Augustine. Existentialism is pessimistic about the present because of the belief that everything is unstable and changing.[4] Quietism, on the other hand, leads to fatalism, because it advocates that “everything already is,” therefore, nothing can be changed and there is no point in action.” In understanding the serious aspect of time, Frankl is tragically optimistic about the present, past and places hope in the future.
And in my cosmology class, all that I could remember about time is the definition: “Time is the number of motions with regard to before and after.”
There are many things to be understood about time...
For the concept of time in Indian Mythology, kindly access - http://www.templenet.com/beliefs/concept_of_time.htm
[3] Queitism conceives time as imaginary. The past, the present and the future are mere illusions of our consciousness. (Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, 103.) Here, eternity rather than the present is the true reality. Quietism in the tradition of Plato and Augustine consider time as eternity – what is meant by eternity is a simultaneous world that encompasses present, past and future. For Augustine, “there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future,” Augustine, Confessions, 11/XX, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans., F. J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943). Hence, for Augustine, time is always the present, present in the mind as memory, sight and expectation, hence simultaneous.
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