Potential Time

What is Segmented Time?

When humans first thought of time, we imagine that our ancestors thought of days and seasons. After all, they would see that there is a period of light and dark and this seems to change throughout the year with the weather and vegetation. Later, civilization brought us to the second, minute and hour. Ubiquitously, time is thought of in this format and further coupled into days, months and years (although some civilizations use a lunar year instead of a solar one, but it’s all the same, right?)

Why do we think of time in a segmented fashion? Is there a way to redefine the way we view time to see it from a holistic perspective?

Firstly, whilst time does exist, that is, existence progresses in some sort of a medium which we refer to as time, seconds are conceptual. Like numbers or ideas, seconds and minutes are concepts that we use to help document (how long does it take for a swallow to fly across Britain?), coordinate (We should meet up at 5) or plan events (Next week works out for you?). Because of time’s conceptual nature, we can begin to imagine a different way of tracking time for our own purposes when we do not need to interact with anybody else.

To illustrate, if you had no way of knowing what time it currently was, but you also didn’t have any reason to care about what time it was, how would you perceive the passing of existence?

Short answer, normally.

The human brain doesn’t require time. If our watches or clocks are a minute ahead or behind it doesn’t do much to hinder us from functioning normally; even day-light saving time is basically humans going “We are now going back an hour” because it helps us coordinate better with what the sun is doing and when we want to be in that time, if you are working on a project and it takes you five hours or ten, once you are “in the zone”, time evaporates and you’re left with merely what you are doing and in what order you are working on things.

Overall, time ends up moving slowly when we are more focused on it and faster when we move further away from it. When we are watching a boring movie or attending a boring lecture we tend to keep our eyes on our watches/phones to get updates on what time it is only to find that time seems to be moving painfully slow. Inversely, when we find ourselves immersed in something we tend to forget the time and remain focused for as long as we remain engaged.

To get back to the first point I brought up, seconds are a concept that we use to track time, therefore, we can begin to come up with another concept to keep track of time in a different way, the moment.

Potential Time and Total Self

Under the Speakback cycle, we attempt to synchronize our past, present and future selves to act and reflect to the best of our capability to reach a goal we desire; however, when we think about what our “past” or “future” selves really mean, we are at a bit of a loss for we cannot compare those answers easily. Some people think of their “past” self as the person they were at the age of 12 or the person they were yesterday; and there is no correct answer. When you think of your future self, it doesn’t overlap with who another person thinks are there future self.

Furthermore, every second, the future is converted to present and the present is converted to past. If we assumed that the speed of time is infinitely fast (as fast it could possibly be) we would be left in a constant state of “present” and an infinite amount of “past” and “future”. Time bottlenecks onto the present and to its left and right is all the past and future, respectively. When we think in Total Self, we remove our state of mind from time to assign it to something that exists at multiple times simultaneously; to elaborate:

If our total-self wished our present self to act in a way that manifests the future version we wish to be, then our future self is acting upon our past self. Although our actions are always occurring in the present, the person committing them (or driving the action) could be older than we currently are, e.g people who give up smoking to better their aged selves. While they are currently a smoker, the person working to abolish the smoking habit is the past self of the person who has stopped smoking (the future self).

Our total self does not exist in the past, present or future but rather exists as an emergent property outside of the three, awake and deciding based on multiple points in time simultaneously.

To think about time in seconds, is to think about kinetic time. What time means to moving objects, interactables, or communities.

To think about time in moments, is to think about potential time. What time feels like to you as you age and reflect upon it. Why Some movies feel short despite being longer and vice versa. Potential Time is about the speed at which time is being processed rather than how fast time is moving.

Experience and Transit Time

With proper reflection, and a drive to commit an action, we find ourselves amongst two potential futures: We are either experiencing something engaging (Having an experience) or we are in transit to where we need/want to be for our next desired experience (Transit Time). Keep in mind, Transit here does not necessitate movement, you could be in transit time as you wait for something to occur. Transit Time merely encompasses all times in which your brain is not engaged in something you deem memorable or significant, and transit time could always be changed into an experience, depending on what happens.

Sometimes a trip to a restaurant is entirely in transit; go in, buy a sandwich, sit down, eat it, get back to what you were doing.

Sometimes while on the same boring walk you take every day you encounter something magnificent that changes that transit time into an experience. However, our days from waking to sleeping are seamlessly stitched in oscillation between these two states of fascination and idleness.

An experience, like transit time, is wholesomely dependent on the individual. Some people consider a TV show an experience and some people don’t. Again, what makes an experience a memorable experience or transit time not an experience is dependent on anybody’s definition of both.

The idleness that becomes the subject of focus though, once we begin thinking in potential time, is the transit time we spend at home.

There have been days where I’d feel in transit despite playing My favorite videogame or watching something. When the experiences we are partaking in are not the ones we want, we distance ourselves from engaging them properly. There is wiggle room for sure, you don’t need to do everything you want now, it’s good to be aware and courteous to others; attend that wedding you might not feel like going to but know you should, spend that day with your parents when your friends are calling, but ultimately, when we choose to engage ourselves, we should work to choose the options we truly desire, finding the fun in progressing ourselves towards our desired future selves. If you’re lounging around at home with free time at your hands but you don’t feel like your usual routine is memorable to you, consider trying out something you always wanted to do, even if you have no experience in it.

Collectively, Experience and Transit Time make up the moments we live and act in. With total self in mind, we begin to confront ourselves with the “What do I do now?” question that pops up at every crossroad in between experience and transit. This in turn allows us to focus on the actions we wish to perform in the present time for our future selves. Consequentially, we will find ourselves in transit to experiencing the future selves we wish to be.