The arrow of time is defined by our calendars and clocks. We use this measured aspect of time in many ways, but primarily for the social coordination of action. Clock time tells us when things happened and when we can expect them to happen. This is so transparent to our way of life that we tend to think of our relationship with time purely as clock time.
However, our experience of time is very different. Sometimes we are very aware of time passing, normally when we are aware of clock time, but sometimes time just flies past and we wonder where it went. In exploring our experience of time, we connect our way of being with time. We can do this by revisiting our distinction of the present as a space. The ‘present moment’ is an experience we construct through memory and our predictive brain and is therefore a product of our way of being in that moment. The implication is we each create our experience of time for ourselves. Rather than engaging with an external thing called time, time is part of our being – our ‘BeingTime’ to steal from Einstein’s concept of ‘spacetime’.
If our experience of time is a manifestation of our way of being, then it is born of our past experiences. As different cultures have different temporal experiences, how we experience time comes in part from the cultural narratives in which we grew up and the temporal distinctions we learnt from those narratives. Our experience of time is not universal, but individually subjective based on our distinctions. The implication is that we learn how to experience time and what time means to us.
Different cultures interpret and experience time differently and, as a result, have a different relationship with time. Given the role of time in the creation of our social reality and the coordination of action, this has wide ranging consequences as we seek to work together with different temporal interpretations. This can show up in even simple distinctions such as lateness. Think about when you think you are late for something. Your response will be based on the context of a particular situation. You may well come up with different answers for a party, a dinner date, a team meeting and a job interview. Yet even in a shared situation, people will have different interpretations. For a work meeting, you might consider people are late if they are not ready to start on time, or if they are not in the room on time, or if they are not in the room when the boss arrives and so on. It will all depend on situations, group norms and personal interpretation.
Time and Our Way of Being
Our way of being has been defined as a hierarchy of predispositions – body, mood, emotion and language. Each predisposition acts as a context for those that follow. These predispositions represent the possible habitual actions we might take given a certain situation.
Based on the ground-breaking work of Benjamin Libet, there is evidence to suggest our predispositions for action are engaged up to 0.3 seconds before entering our consciousness and fully 0.5 seconds before the action occurs. This is a function of our predictive brain as it directs our body to prepare for what is expected. The vast majority of our actions never enter our awareness and we act as we are predisposed. In other words, we act habitually repeating the lessons we have embodied from our past.
However, with self-awareness and some relevant distinctions and interpretations, we can recognise and intervene in those predispositions. The only domain of experience that allows for that intervention is our incredibly powerful linguistic ability. Unlike other living beings, we need not be the victim of our predispositions. We can use language to interpret and direct our experiences and therefore seek to design and create our ways of being. We can not only learn from experience; we can direct our learning.
Our way of being is not static but in a constant state of flux. Our physical being generates and holds the source of our energy, provides the means for how well our energy flows and where we direct it. As our energy level is constantly changing so is our way of being. In our constant search for meaning, we observe those different ways of being and interpret ‘patterns of being’. These patterns speak to our habitual ways of being in life and form the basis of our stories of ourselves and others. Embodied learning involves changes to those patterns of being. This does not generally occur through a single experience but repeated experiences leading to different predictions and simulations.
To create repeated experiences, we must generate self-awareness in specific future situations so we can then choose to act as we prefer rather than habitually. I term these future moments a ‘choice point’. This approach addresses a commonly found issue where people gain knowledge about a domain of life but are unable to access that knowledge when it could be applied for better outcomes. Learning the practices to better generate future choice points is critical to effectively embody new habits or patterns of being.
Time and Our Relationships
If each one of us is constantly stepping into the future, then we do so together. Yet as we only know our own experience, we are stepping forward whilst guessing what others are doing and determining how we allow others to impact our future and vice versa. How we do this defines the fundamental nature of our relationships. As we shall see later, this is directly related to the authority we give ourselves and others. In healthy relationships, this ‘authority dynamic’ is based on trust, but when trust is missing or severely diminished then it involves a process of seeking to control others through force or manipulation.
As with our way of being, we notice the patterns of the authority dynamic and these are used to form our stories of the status of our relationships.