About Time

We cling to past, present, and future — yet perhaps all we truly know, or ever will, is the now.

Sep 02, 2025 · 3 min read

All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Reading Julie Fredrickson’s article about John Mbiti’s philosophy prompted a few associations — our perception of the world is truly limited.

Mbiti contrasts the Western linear view of time with an African conception that recognises only the present (sasa) and the past (zamani), with little space for a “real” future. It reminded me of Ted Chiang’s short story The Story of Your Life (adapted into the film Arrival), in which aliens perceive time not as a sequence of causes and effects but “all at once”. Instead of causality, they live within teleology: everything exists simultaneously, and experience is simply a matter of vantage point. Because they perceive events through time as they are, this perspective alters how they act. When the protagonist learns to see the world as they do, her choices and understanding of life change in turn.

Our view of the present and past is shaped by the limitations of three-dimensional space and our inability to perceive additional dimensions. Referring to time as a “fourth dimension” is not strictly accurate, though the distinction is less important here than the point itself.

Our perception of time as paramount may itself be misplaced — we are limited beings navigating a three-dimensional perspective, unable to see or move freely through spacetime. This idea is echoed in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five: “all moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.” Death, in this view, is simply one condition in one moment. The famous refrain, “So it goes,” reflects the futility of clinging to a linear notion of beginnings and endings. Similarly, in Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh’s No Death, No Fear, he writes: “I have never been born and I have never died.” Both perspectives undermine the primacy of time by suggesting continuity beyond our narrow perception.

All of this brings me back to Socrates and his line: “I know that all I know is that I do not know anything.” Our sense of past, present, and future may simply be a byproduct of how human beings evolved to make sense of reality. Other cultures, philosophies, and sciences propose alternative scaffolds — presentism, teleology, spacetime — and none can be taken as final. And just as Louise in The Story of Your Life begins to live differently once she perceives time differently, perhaps our own limited perception quietly shapes not only what we see, but how we act.

Perhaps all we truly know is the now.

P.S. Both Slaughterhouse-Five and The Story of Your Life raise profound questions about free will in relation to time. That thread deserves its own exploration — one for a future post.