Where do you live in the duration? Are you thinking about future plans, future vacations, future events, weddings, graduations, promotions, etc.? Or are you in a place or moment in your life where you think more about the past, things that happened, good or not so good events?
In Discover Free will and personal responsibility, Noted humanist psychologist Joseph Rychlak (1928-2013) recognized that reminiscing about pleasant memories is normal and can sometimes even be psychologically beneficial. However, he noted that most psychologists agree that living in the past is unhealthy. Rychlak believed that the basic nature of humans is future-oriented, that “we always shape ourselves by arranging future situations or allowing them to arrange us.”
How our relationship with time evolves depends in part on culture. In the United States, we live on “clock time.” If we have dinner at 7:00 p.m., we will be close to that time. However, some countries are in “relationship time”. For example, a Brazilian doctor once told me that he never arrives at anyone’s house in time for dinner. It is considered rude. A few hours would be fine. If you’ve traveled the world, you’ve probably experienced these differences in how time is perceived in everyday life.
Where we live in time is, like time itself, subjective. What is time really? The answer depends on who is being asked. Different disciplines and fields within disciplines often see time differently. Some philosophers may question whether time is real or an illusion, while some physicists see it as a dimension of our physical reality, one of the dimensions of spacetime. Years ago, Paul Brockelman wrote about the inherent, pervasive, and fundamental nature of time. Time shapes our experiences, but “we cannot taste it, see it, smell it, hear it, or touch it.” However, we perceive ourselves in the temporal structure of past-present-future. As Ronald Purser has stated, “The heart of our experience is then strictly confined to the realm of linear time, within which events occur in a predictable sequential order and move decisively from the past, to the present, and into the future.”
Rychlak described us as living on the ever-fluctuating edge of the present as it moves into the future. He distinguished between short-term futures and long-term futures. He suggested that we can be so invested in creating or planning our long-term future that we don’t experience the short-term future—appreciating one afternoon, evening, another day, or enjoying our partner, children, or others, or experiencing a sunset or a starry night. Don’t miss the present and don’t live with present awareness.
Cardaciotto and colleagues defined present awareness as “the continuous monitoring of experience with a focus on present experience rather than preoccupation with past or future events.” Awareness is currently associated with improved well-being, decline anxietyand other positive psychological benefits. Rychlak agrees. He suggested that most of us in the present (or near future) live in “times of rest” – vacations, special evenings, love, meditation, exercise, etc. He concluded: “The secret of a happy life seems to be the completion of such a present life.” en route.”
To maximize our potential, we need to understand not only how we use our time, but how our use of time affects who we become.
