On Time

Praeteritum enim iam non est et futurum nondum est.

"For the past is not now, and the future is not yet."
- St. Augustine from Confessions

And so I begin my foray into the world of blogging: with an explanation of my blog's title and a few thoughts on time. St. Augustine devoted the second half of book 11 from Confessions to the pursuit of understanding the concept of time and memory. "What then is time?" He asks, "If no one asks me, I know, if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know. " To drastically boil down an intriguing piece of writing, it seems that Augustine argues the philosophical doctrine known as presentism - essentially that "Neither that which will be, nor that which is past, exists now." He delves into such mysteries of how we can measure something that is continually passing, what constitutes a "long time" and a "short time", what roles our memories have, and what God was doing before He created the world. I've always found the concept of time rather fascinating - as Augustine noted, it seems simple until you have to think about or explain it. We measure it by the movement of heavenly bodies, calendar pages, and watch hands. We feel it's effects. But what is it? The passage of time is unstoppable. It marches on with astounding regularity. And yet it can seem so subjective! Why is it that virtually every human (including myself) can attest that their years seem to grow terribly shorter the older they get? All that remains of the past is our memories, and memories seem to consist primarily of lives highs, lows, and new experiences. Surely our youth flew by in our business, but in retrospect we view those years as being much longer than the ones today. Is that because everything was new and we created so many memories? As we settle in to the routine of a responsible working adult with all our plans in place, do we cease to make as many memories, and thus time speeds up? Like Augustine, I must admit that I find both comfort and infinitely more mystery in the fact that God exists beyond these limitations that He created. Spe enim salui facti sumus et promissa tua per patientiam expectamus. "By hope we are saved, through patience we wait for your promises."

So what does any of this rambling have to do with anything - especially the title of my new blog? For that I must give credit to my friend, Jack Freeman. He penned the simplest of profound statements in the refrain of the song The Here and Now:

"Why, if life is lived between big plans, do I sit with idle, folded hands? Life aint lived when you're thinking about what's around the bend - the here and now is your only chance to make a difference in the end."

I am the king of living between big plans. I'm the Grand Potentate of the Procrastinator's Partnership Worldwide. Okay, so no such organization exists, but if anyone ever got around to starting it, I would be the Grand Potentate. And I am not alone. Nearly everyone, to one degree or another, seems to glory in the memories of the past and elaborate on the plans of the future; all the while forgetting that what really matters is what they are doing now - at that exact, precise moment. Because neither of the other things they speak of even exist.