Ever since I was little, the concept of time has been pounded into my head,—from worksheets identifying the past, present, and future of verbs to time management courses that I still have yet to get the hang of. Time controls our lives, no doubt about that. It is the driving force that determines what we need to be doing and where we need to be. As solid of a concept as it is to most people, to others it is just a convenient organizational life hack. One of the most beautiful concepts of time is how each individual sees it much differently than the next.
Out of the three aspects of time, the one that is talked about the most at this point in my life is the future. What am I going to do? Where am I going to school? What are you going to do with your degree? These are just a sample of the questions everyone has been asking. It is almost as if there is a format for talking to college students and those are part of the requirements. I have a map of classes on a course audit that is controlling my academic future currently. Besides my major, everything else is decided as I go along. The future is this big unknown mess that we are supposed to have a plan for as early as we can grasp the concept of it, but we can never be certain that is the way it will happen.
Having a future plan is one of the things every human has in common. Even if someone claims to be “winging” it, they really do have a plan or have to come up with one at some point. What we don’t realize is the people who seem crazy because they don’t have every minute of their life planned out are the ones that are best off. They are the most prepared to handle anything that comes their way. They do not freak out when something goes awry and not according to plan. The future is a whole slew of curveballs that we may or may not be able to hit. All we can do to prepare for these pitches is use the predictable ones to hit dingers so when that curveball comes, we have the confidence to hit it.
While the future is full of the great unknown and is scary to us, the past is the opposite. It is a collection of events that we carry with us every day; they have already happened and make us who we are. It allows us to prepare for the awful f-word by giving us experience to draw from. But, many people choose to live in their pasts. As we grow older, it becomes easier to do so. It holds comfort because events that reside there will stay with us forever. That awesome trip to the zoo or the beach? The memories will always be there to revisit when it is the middle of a Northeastern Pennsylvania winter where four pairs of socks and two sweaters along with a blanket are required to stay warm. Not only does the past provide comfort, but it also provides us with a sense of identity. It helps to shape our personalities, morals, and life goals based on what we have done up until the moment we are in. Every hardship or every accomplishment gives us a base for making choices in the here and now.
That brings me to the last aspect of time, the present. This is where we live our lives and where we make our choices that go into the archive of memories. The present can be defined many ways, but I find the best way to do so is to put it simply. The present is every breath that comes in and out of our lungs. It is every beat of our heart and it is submersion in an emotion. Every moment of our life shares these three things, whether it is past, present, or future, but the present is where we get to experience them, where we get to feel the intoxication of love the strongest, as well as the devastation of heartbreak. The present is where the truth occurs, before any sort of memory alteration and after the speculation of what the event is going to be like while it is in the future. It is the rawest human state, which is why it can be so hard to live in.
To be able to avoid the pureness of the present, many people exist only in the past or focus on the future. While it is okay to spend some time on each, anyone who immerses themselves in either misses out on emotions at their strongest and on truly living life.
Putting the aesthetic portion of the present away, there is also a practical side to it. The present is where we cope. It is where the past meets the future and where we must pull from experience to greet the unknown. This is another reason why living in the present may be avoided. People tend to not like messy things and usually a mess is what results from collisions. Although the collision of the past and future is purely an abstract thing, it does not mean that it does not get messy in an abstract way. But that mess is also wrapped up into the beauty of the present and the emotions that come with it.
Time is the hardest concept for me to wrap my head around, one that I spend a lot of time thinking and gathering new ideas about. I have found that some people live by the concrete idea that the past, present, and future is yesterday, today, and tomorrow respectively. They believe that time is simply a number shown on a clock. I believe that it is a much bigger and beautiful concept that cannot be set in concrete and defined one way. Maybe that is why I am always late to class.