St. Augustine was Way Ahead of His Time...or Was He?

Next on my name dropping tour is the oh so sexy St Augustine. In the midst of his ramble about what a terrible and sinful cat he was he stops to think about time. What is time exactly he wonders? He argues that it doesn't really exist except as a construct in our mind. You see the past no longer exists except in the impressions it has left in our memory. The future is only potentially and at best is in the process of coming to be. Leaving only the present which is an instant without duration. In the time it has taken you to read this passage a countless number of presents have slipped from non existence in the future to once having been as a part of the past. This causes a bit of a problem. For you see time as we know it is a measure but it measures something without duration. You could argue that "no it is a measure from one instant to the next." But if you stack a bunch of instants without any duration next to each other you still end up with nothing. And to measure from the past to the future is to place a ruler from what no longer is to what may not be.

I suppose the moral of this story is that time, which rules so much of what we do, is yet another illusion we have created for ourselves to help cope with the word around us. The only thing that is is now. Memory is real, Hope is real. Time is not. It can't be wasted or well spent. It doesn't fly or stand still. It simply draws our focus dangerously away from the only thing that really matters. The world in front of you at this moment; tactile, sensuous, troubled and glorious.

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