What is time
Imagine you clap your hands. A second after the clap, it’s already in the past—you can’t re-experience the clap happening in that exact moment; you only have a memory or an echo of it. One second before you clap is the future that hasn’t happened yet; you only anticipate or imagine it. But in both cases—the past and the future—you’re using your mind to think about them.
What you directly experience is the clap happening now—the sound, the feel in your palms, and any immediate reaction in your body. No matter how many seconds ago or ahead you try to imagine, it’s never actually happening right now. This shows us that time—as in “past” or “future”—lives mostly in our thoughts and is a conceptual truth. Our direct experience is always what we sense in this very moment.
