TIME

(Published in the September 2009 edition of the East Bay Psychiatric Newsletter)


There are many invisible forces that govern the functioning of the universe that are difficult to understand—gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear bonds that hold atoms together, to name a few. Physicists have helped us better comprehend these forces, but another invisible process that governs all of life that even physicists cannot comprehend is that of time. We know that time is uncontrollable, unrelenting, and endless, but does anyone really understand it? Some theorists think that the nature of time may be circular, not linear, so even the most basic perceptions of time remain open to question.

I recently read an interesting book which grapples with this subject: “Time and the Soul,” by philosopher Jacob Needleman. Needleman points out that the greatest thinkers through the ages have failed to grasp the nature of time because, simply stated, “It cannot be understood!” When referring to time, St. Augustine wrote, “I know well enough what it is, provided no one asks me.”

The concept of time dovetails with the important psychological concept of mindfulness, that is, being aware of what is transpiring in the moment. To remain in the moment and not think about the past or the future requires great discipline. The fact is that the past is gone and cannot be changed, and the future remains beyond our control. So what is actually left to our control is only the present—the moment at hand. When Aristotle said, “A wise man never hurries”, I believe he meant that to move away from mindfulness of the present moment in order to get to the future means that one is squandering the present, which can never be recaptured. This insight is useful in combating man’s tendency to rush through life with the hope of experiencing eventual happiness, as he neglects living fully in the present.

Part of effective psychotherapy is to help patients learn to be mindful so that they are able to squeeze every ounce of awareness they can out of the moment at hand. To dwell on the future drains away the capacity to experience the potential happiness of the present. And the sense that one can actually control the future is but a human illusion anyway. An old Yiddish proverb states, “Man plans and God smiles!”

While time surely does move forward relentlessly, when one is fully absorbed in the moment, time can seem to stand still. When there is no looking at watches or thinking about the next day’s plans, it hardly seems as if time is passing. And paradoxically, sometimes when very long periods of time have elapsed, this period can also seem imperceptible. For instance, when I went to my fortieth medical school reunion, my relationship with friends whom I had not seen in those four decades picked up right where we had left off, as if no time at all had transpired. Children and grandchildren had been born and careers had been started and finished, yet it felt as if nothing had changed in our relationships with each other. What does it mean that such a length of time can elapse yet feel so fleeting?

It appears that the more one deals with life in the present, the better off one is psychologically. We do not need to comprehend the complex concept of time in order to experience the present moment to the fullest. We can leave it to the philosophers to grapple with the nature of time. But one needs to find as much meaning in every moment that one can, because we cannot hold time still, and eventually we will run out of time, and the present will no longer exist for any of us.