What Time Is It? It’s Past, Present and Future.

July 2020, at dawn

Time has finally passed rather quickly and it’s July again. We’re back in summer. Are we getting younger and younger?

Let’s seize this summer day - we only live once! - and take some time off to reflect about time...

What is present tense anyway, if we consider it in the sense of an action happening exactly at the present point in time? Have we ever experienced an instantaneous moment? What we perceive as occurring in the present seems actually made up of things that have already happened in the past… Even light does not travel instantaneously and takes some time to reach us.

In hindsight, we may remember some intense moments of “here and now” awareness, filled with connection, caring and appreciation, and we hope that we will keep them close to heart for years to come.

The present would be full of all the futures, if the past wasn't already projecting a story into it. ― André Gide, Les Nourritures terrestres, 1897

Whether we like it or not, it seems difficult to deny that there is a continuity between our past and our present. Despite the impermanence of all things, what has passed away often remains in some marginal way as "transitional fossils" (from Classical Latin: fossilis, literally "obtained by digging", Oxford English Dictionary). We live among the remnants of the past.

The past is never dead. It's not even past. ― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, 1951

To break free from now obsolete habits and behaviours that were once useful in dealing with problems, it may prove helpful to explore the links between our past and our present. Our relationships’ patterns, learned and trained during childhood tend to define the way we interact with others in adulthood, at home and at work; not all of them are necessarily appropriate anymore. We can’t change what we don’t notice.

Beyond the patchwork of causes and effects that make up our personal life story, let's dare to explore also our family tree, both a life-giving treasure and a deadly trap. By better understanding our place in our genealogy, we may become more conscious of the traces of the past, how they still affect us, and open our ability to heal the ancient struggle between the repetitive forces of the past and the creative forces of the future. By taking the past into consideration, we would free us up from old constraints and harness better our familial and individual talents (A. Jodorowsky and M. Costa, Metagenealogy, 2014). Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to reclaim as much as possible our past.

We are older than our life. ― Edmond Jabès, a poet of Egyptian origin, remembered as a bridge of culture and memory between the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Le Soupçon - Le désert, 1978

There is a general consensus within our global western culture that what was there before us, what is transmitted to us, partially determines us. And even though we may never truly remember the most significant memories from our early age, they may still live within us, operating at levels beneath our awareness and influencing how we perceive ourselves and present situations, what we say and how we behave, here and now.

What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves, or it will not be yours. ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, 1808 (often quoted by a famous pupil of J.-M. Charcot)

Different cultures have been organizing and making sense of experiences about past, present and future in different ways though; some tend to consider them as linearly sequential, others as simultaneously included. Time doesn’t appear everywhere as predictable, smooth and comforting as the beautiful ticking of a mechanical watch movement. English language tends to express future with verbs, Japanese prefers to suggest it by context. Each language has its own grammatical structures to express time and to approach past and future. 

In the past there was more future than now. ― Philippe Geluck, Le Chat, 1999

If we cross the ocean to reach the Polynesian Islands, and maybe turn back the clock a century or two, we may encounter individuals for whom the future is considered to be behind them, because it is totally unknown, whereas the past is in front of them, because it is lived entirely in the present. Others customs, other times.

Even in our contemporary globalized society, our historical understanding of past periods depends on our review, update and revitalization in the present. In other words, the past is only truly understood once it is part of the present.

The concept of a finite past and of an unknowable future might well be an artefact of culture and language…

“What day is it?” asked Pooh. / “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. / “My favorite day,” said Pooh.” ― A.A. Milne, The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh, 2001 (75th Anniversary edition)

Understanding the true nature of time is not over and it continues to perplex contemporary and future scientists ; uncovering the origin of the "arrow of time" remains a fundamental scientific challenge. Outside the thermodynamic world, in the limbo of the quantum reality, some physicists have even provided support for retrocausality, or backwards causation, in which an effect precedes its cause in time : a change in the state of a particle in the present could affect the state of an entangled particle in the past. If a later event can affect an earlier one, it suggests that the future could therefore influence the past…

On a more mundane level, we can surely relate to the fact that our current thoughts and feelings not only have an impact on the way we anticipate and think about the future but also contaminate how and what we remember about the past.

How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? ― Dr. Seuss (1904-1991); poem written one year before his death

Furthermore, since the human brain has a natural tendency to please self-fulfilling prophecies, to automatically act in ways that confirm expectations and to realize predictions, our task might eventually be not to foresee the future, but to enable it (A. Saint-Exupéry, Citadelle, 1948). When we imagine some future scenario, irrespective of whether it’s positive or negative, we imagine our current self in that scenario.

the first dream of the year... / I keep it a secret / and smile to myself — Sho-u (Tr. R.H. Blyth, The British Museum Haiku, 2005)

Time taken too literally and linearly can be a tyranny. David Whyte, a contemporary English poet, once suggested that we are never one thing; we are a conversation - everything we have been, everything we are now and every possibility we could be in the future.

I don’t think much about being age appropriate. ― Paul Weller, talking about style, July 2020

Our identities never stand still. What length of time can a man be considered identical to himself anyway, wondered Milan Kundera (Les testaments trahis, 1995)?

The ideas of past, present and future bring movement into the mind and therefore access to new possibilities. When people become stuck in time, not able to access memory of the past or dream about their future, it may indicates that they have suffered some kind of trauma (J. Pooley, Layers of meaning : a coaching journey, In H. Brunning, Executive Coaching, 2006). Without memory, how could we project ourselves into the future? 

The future is a door, the past is the key. ― Victor Hugo ?

Already a century ago, Einstein fundamentally altered the way we now think about time by suggesting that time and motion are somehow linked. Spontaneously playing with variations of darkness and light, artistically projecting shadows to apply depth on reality, the three dimensions of the Euclidean space - width, breadth, and height, intertwine with time into a four-dimensional 'spacetime' that forms the fabric of the universe.

Every place we visit is now imbued with memories of the past, every space we enter helps create new ones, and when we go back where we grew up, each street corner holds multiple emotional stories - we can feel it. No space is neutral. Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me, said once Sigmund Freud - actually, we remember falsely, Freud is not on record has having said or written this lovely quote (it doesn’t seem completely implausible that he would have said it though, based on what we know now about his love of literature at the time).

Paths through the seasons of life may not end and we could well assume that all the different phases of our journey are related to each other.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour ― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1803

When we dare to embrace the past and the future, our self-awareness seems to instantaneously expand and our reflective capacity increases our sense of vigilance and responsibility. We become more whole as human beings and we dramatize less some of our irrational fears. Ultimately, we also better recognize the connections between our personal and our professional life, and this realization improves them both.

When we start a new job, if we are sensitive and patient enough to listen to the story that began before us, acknowledging the team's history, the backgrounds of its members and the relationships that have existed long before we have joined the organization, we are able to integrate better the meanings and attitudes that our interlocutors bring to their encounter with us – the unknowing transference of past attachments and aspects of themselves on to us and others in the corporate life.

Nowadays, even global consulting firms that help clients synchronize strategy and talent for maximized growth and organizational success - for today and the future, recognize self-awareness as a key ingredient in the development of corporate leaders, to create a positive emotional climate and to drive high performing teams (D. Goleman, Korn Ferry’s corporate website, 2020). Leadership starts with oneself. To connect with our emotions, to understand what drives them and to align our self-image with a larger reality is no more considered "abstract philosophical bull-stuff", but is now assumed to be one of the attributes of great leadership (Manfred Kets de Vries, Richard Davidson, Vanessa Druskat, Richard Boyatzis, George Kohlrieser, …).

 « Time travel » is not limited to navigating between time zones and to collecting vintage pocket watches. We could also benefit from knowing how to juggle the different periods of our lives, the present time’s challenges and the past eras’ experiences.

Are we able to peacefully welcome the presence of those we have encountered in our lives, face-to-face or through the words that they left behind, who are still with us, one way or another?

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. ― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand, 1975

Will we have the courage needed to face our remorses and regrets, to open our-selves to the messages contained in the dreams of our previous nights and in those we hold about future achievements?

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. ― C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self, 1968 (1951)

By making meaningful connections to our experiences and to our current reality, we would identify better what belongs where, from past to present. If we take into account some of the significant moments that span and mark our inner-stories, embracing not solely the present, but also the past and the future, taking into consideration both manifest and latent levels of meaning, if we stay "on the move" and keep a curious, adventurous, explorative and playful mind, in other words if we dare to be "psycho-dynamic", we will develop our capacity to "see under the surface" of a static – confined – present, we would expand and enrich the meaning of our intimate stories. We will be able to persevere in being (Benedict de Spinoza, 1677) and become freer to conceive new lively dreams and hopes. 

We feel we are afraid to look, when actually it is not-looking that makes us afraid. The minute we look, we cease being afraid. ― Michael Crichton, Travels, 1988

We will better welcome and appreciate every bit of our own life, even if some of them are unpleasant, and consider them as a necessity to become ourselves. We will be able to consider more options and make better choices. Hopefully, we will impose less of the burdens of our past on those around us. We will be better able to spend every day of our lives creating beauty, which affects the minds of others through time (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883). We will become creative and active participants in our own destiny.

Let’s remember: There is enough time.