Time Stops

I wrote this on parts of time, and I forgot where I was going with it: 

The present is the first to grasp because it deals with immediacy. The present is the point in which the future becomes the past. You can never really be present, because our concept of future is transitioning to the past as soon as you think about it. So then, the present is more or less indescribable without the future or the past. 

The past is what has happened, and at this point in society, is unalterable (save reporting, which I won't touch on here). 

The future is a true unknown. There are the best laid plans of mice and men, but nothing is certain. The future is that which will occur depending on the continuity of existence. 

So can you really be present? No. The present is the point that future transitions to the past. So where do we exist in all of that? Do we exist on that point? Possibly a step behind it? Or maybe time isn't enough to define our existence, like speed isn't enough to describe velocity (velocity also needs a direction). We can only say we were at some point in time. We can't describe if we're "present," and we aren't certain enough in the continuity of existence to say that we will be at some point in the future. We only know that we were. We don't know if we are or if we will be. 

The reason I bring this up is to question what kind of authority we can claim on predicting the future, assessing the "present," or analyzing the past. I say we have none, but we do it anyway to try and make sense of things. Making sense of things is one of our chief ambitions in life. It is not in human nature to accept absurdity. Take a little reading trip into existentialism, however, and you'll see the call to embrace the absurdness of life. It's a compelling argument, considering how little we grasp of our man-made concept called time. 

Thank you, Explosions In the Sky, for providing music that makes me grab a few books and think about complicated subjects like time or morality at odd hours. 

RP