About time

We live in a time-space dimension. Time is an entity within our dimension. It is an onward progression and never a regression. Beings that live within this time-space universe are always progressing into an onward future. However, the future does not exist. The past does not exist either. What exist now is the PRESENT. The notion of future and past exists in our mind and is built within our framework of reference in this time-space dimension. We should then learn how to savour the present moment instead of always looking to the future or living in the past. The present moment demands our full attention. Whatever vocation we are holding on to or corporate world we are working in, we are always living in a real world. The real world is not what is out there, but what is here. The mistake many of us make is that ‘the real world is out there’ when in fact the world and the surroundings we live in are what constitute the real world.

But it is ironic that what we are doing now is never a now, but a past. Even what you are reading now is not even in a NOW, but the past. The words and letters that you see on the screen now is an image that is beamed into your eyes and your brain decipher the message and you react to it now – ALL these within a span of one second. If you can break all these components into separate minute second, then the image that beamed from the screen took place about 0.1sec ago, your mind decipher it about 0.1sec ago and you are now reacting to it. Even the signal from your brain to activate your body motion needs some time, maybe less than a split second. What we are reacting to are images and sounds that exist in the past. The past might be 0.1 sec ago, 1 sec ago, 1 min ago or even hours and days ago. Our brain has an immense capacity to process the all forms of senses that we receive.

We are created in time, so we will also end in time. All beings that are created in time are governed by the 2^nd Law of thermodynamics, i.e. we live in a world of irreversible process and the entropy is increasing all the time. Eventually, the energy and the orderliness in the whole universe will run down. As we are bounded by time dimension, we have to accept the fact that one day; we will cease to exist in this time-space dimension. Whether our soul will exist in this dimension is another question. However, the fact that all of us will cease to exist in this dimension seems to be an anti-climax to our human achievements and a mockery to whatever epitome that we have built in our lifetime. We are limited, this is a fact. Limited to live and die in this time-space constrain. However, things would be better this way, I guess. We are being taught humility by our timely/untimely death. This teaches us to value life, friendship, and the people around us. This also makes us seek out the good and things (be it tangible or intangible) that bespeak eternity. In a sense, we are created to seek meaning and eternity.

If there is a realm of eternity, then that is where time cease to exist. But is it possible for time to not exist? According to Immanuel Kant, human experience is bounded by space and time and that it is intelligible only as a system of completely determined causal relations existing between events in the world and not between the world and anything outside of it has the consequence that there can be no knowledge of God, freedom, or human immortality. Each of these ideas exceeds the bounds of empirical experience and hence is banished from the realm of reason. – Italics from Encyclopædia Britannica.

Hence, we can never know what is beyond our dimension. This means that if we were to seek for knowledge of eternity from our side, we will fail in our quest. However, I believe that if someone were to come from the dimension of eternity and reveal to us what is beyond our dimension, it is there then that we can trust what lies beyond our dimension. This someone is Jesus Christ. He has come into our world two thousand years ago and has indeed told us what lies beyond us.
[John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.]

Jesus Christ has revealed to us what lies beyond death. He has died and resurrected (I use resurrected and not just came back alive because after his resurrection, he has appeared to be in full health and not in the tortured and frail form he was subjected to when he was tried and crucified). He has given us the assurance that those of us who die with Him will indeed be resurrected again together with Him. That lays in the future realm. In the current realm, because of His expiation for our sins, we are able to come before God and to have a relationship with Him. This is what is termed ‘eternal life’, i.e. a life together with God forever. This eternity supersedes the dimension of time and this is the hope which frees us from the entrapment of time.

The Creator of time has put us within the boundary of time and as we progress in the march of time, we experience the fragility of our existence. Such fragility forces us to recognize our limitations and to seek to live a more worthy life dependent on God. It is only there then that I start to be able to make some sense out of the absurdity from this constraint inherent in our time dimension. This is the dawn of relization that a meaningful life can indeed be fulfilled within our limitations.