Cameo: Meditations on Time I

In the following piece, the writer seeks to argue through experimental means to establish an understanding of an aspect of the nature of time. The writer uses the following fiction to support it.




I, a young handsomely-built silhouette lay thoughtful on a rock, on a beach, on an exotic island. My eyes followed the enchanting luminosity of the golden sunset as I meditated upon this profound idea:

"How strange a thing is Time! How quick its feet as it runs without rest! The days follow the nights and the seasons never stop. The trees blossom to its music and die to its melody. Even the celestial spheres are dragged down into death and decay - look how the sun is killed, how the light is extinguished, how darkness is born again!

What is time? A monster that sentences all mankind to death in a single sweep. A storm that casts fear into everyone's soul. No, truly tell me, what is time?"

And why should I submit to her? If she wants to cleave off my head, why then should I stretch my neck likewise? Let me conquer her. Let me conquer time. And if she cannot be conquered, then let me know her, this angel of death, in all her manifestations and glory. Let me understand Time."

And as I meditated, I realised, "It is the flow of time, the constant flow of moments - momemts so minute I can not perceive, moments so fleeting I can not comprehend. The secret of the 'moment' is the secret of time. For what is moment? Who can ever claim to have seen a moment? Heard a moment? Felt its touch?"

I then said, "Surely to conquer time, is to capture the moment. Carpe Diem in its most literal form!"

Then I said, "I will capture the moment."

So I decided to come back at dawn, before the crowing rooster called and before the first signs of light appeared.

And I did so, prepared to watch the unfolding of time in the rise of the fiery sun.

"For what is time but the unfolding of events, and to feel time one must perceive the events. For time is what separates the sunrise from the sunset, the full-moon from the new. Time is naught but a manifestation of events."

And so I waited, and the first rays of light shot up the horizon. I felt time pass as the shimmer of light gently revealed itself from far and wide.

"I should measure time with moments," I said, "For surely this event is slow. How many moments will it consist of? And how much is a moment? When can I actually say: this is one moment?"

I could give no definitive answer. Instead I resorted to something I could perceive: my own heartbeat...

As the sun rose bit by bit, it did so against the pounding of my heart. I counted silently, beat by beat, and when the sun was finally up, I had enumerated over a thousand beats.

"I could measure the sunrise with the beating in my chest. A thousand beats was a large number indeed. But how many moments is that?"

And I said, "Surely, if I can measure the slow with the fast, as I did with the sunrise and the heart, then I can measure the heart with something even faster. But what is faster than my heartbeat?"

Such a question led me to an hourglass, where every grain of sand took so little time in passing from the upper chamber to the lower chamber that it seemed like lightning.

I took great care, as I held the hourglass ready before me and one hand upon my heart. I turned the instrument.
Thump! I felt that single beat resonating in my body.
In that hugely short period, I found that a very shallow heap of sand had collected at the bottom of the lower chamber. I calculated the grains of sand with immense patience, weighing them against a rock and comparing with the weight of a single grain. To my astonishment, each heartbeat was over a hundred thousand grains falling from upper chamber to lower chamber! I was impressed.

I had come much closer to the 'moment' than I had ever done. Pondering a little, I was sure I was on the verge of grasping Time - the concept and the nature.

"But," I then asked, "if every heartbeat is a hundred thousand grains, how much is one grain? For when I look carefully into the hourglass, I seem to perceive some amount of time, a very tiny amount of time to be sure, as the first grain leaves the upper chamber and falls freely to the bottom. Surely that tiny amount contains several moments."


And so I set off to measure the moments in the falling of a grain. But what is faster than an hourglass?
My mind raced for an answer, and my answer came to me in a flash.

"If I can perceive so small a time as the falling of one grain, it must be due to my detailed perception. And surely, in that little time that I perceive, I can think faster than that grain can fall."

So I set up the hourglass with only one grain in it, then tipped it over and let my mind race. I found that I could only think of two things in that tiny amount of time.

"Thus every event in the world is judged by my perception, and is set against the flickering of my mind. For the mind moves through ideas as the substances move through space. And the time I perceive must be the number of flicks my mind does as the world around me changes. As the sun rose, I perceived a large amount of time. As my heart beat, I perceived an amount of time less than the amount before. As the grains fell, I perceived a tiny amount of time - in fact, so tiny, that it seemed to consist of only two flicks.
But I still do not know... what is the 'moment'?
For I measured the sun with the heart which was faster, the heart with the sand which was faster, the sand with the mind which was faster. But what is faster than the mind? How many moments live in every flick of the mind?
The more I think, the more I feel it's a hopeless pursuit. For everything I perceive, I perceive via the mind - and there can be nothing faster than the mind - if there does exist such a speedy thing, then my mind will not have the capacity to perceive it - and thus, I will never know anything faster than the mind...
So, what is the 'moment'? Can it be anything other than the present? And how much time is there in the present? Infinite, I say. But I cannot perceive it - if I could, then it would not be a moment for me - And that must be why I perceive the present only. Even when I perceive the past, I perceive it through the window of the present... as a memory; a vague blur of what actually happened.

Yes, the present is the most basic of temporal perceptions there is - for every creature can see the eyes of another, but not the eyes of itself - and certainly, a creature can perceive the different timeframes of another, but not its own timeframe.... to do so, it would have to be someone else, somewhere else... and this is impossible!

So, no creature can analyse its own 'moment', for if it could, it would not have been one moment at all, but several moments.

So... what is the 'moment'? It is the time I possess - a time different than anyother - and all other activities are perceived as a multiple of that moment.


Thus Time exists - as real and as solid as anything - but it's measure, it's amount, is also dependent on my perception, as the time I perceive is relative to my very own personal 'moment'. Each person has a personal moment - this is the uniqueness of perception!

I now knew what Time was. It was not a fatal countdown, an apolcalyptic descent. It was simply a relationship of presents - a relationship of moments - and thus I declared:

"Time is always now for me - for the World, there is no such thing as now."

Having understood this, I felt drowsy and so I slept.