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Trying to grasp the concept of time is slippery—like trying to get ahold of a greased pig (and it’s hard enough to get hold of an ungreased one). I think for most of us, the concept of the future is this amorphous, distant thing that will happen to us, crash upon us at some point. The past is distant, equally hazy. The present: so fleeting, so ephemeral, so vulnerable to a thousand distractions that pull us forward or backwards, that it also begins to feel intangible.
With all of this confusion, it’s certainly tempting to make order by thinking of time as a linear structure, breaking it into a tripartite for clarity. It’s our human nature, adapted for survival, to try and place things in neat boxes so we don’t have to consider them too deeply and can move on with ourselves. So much falls through the gaps when we do this though. It’s messy in the swirling muck, but it’s the only place where truths are found.
The fact is, the present is the only real thing we have; everything else is a memory. Time is constantly collapsing upon itself: each moment slips into the past as we step into the future with each breath. We both inhabit the world around us and build it as we go. I always think about this as the cartoon character frantically laying out track in front of the speeding locomotive they’re careening forward on.
The act of world-building is often spoken of in activist and artist circles. The first step to this process must always be imagination. “Everything created must first be imagined” (Arlene Goldbard). Imagination is dangerous. It allows us to dream, create worlds not yet visible—and sets us afire with longing for that place. This is the part that I think has the potential to frighten us out of even dipping a toe into fantasy: if we conjure a future we desire, we fear becoming consumed by yearning for something we aren’t sure we can ever achieve.
Imagination is dangerous to those who wish things to remain unchanged. It is a spark that reminds us of our divinity: the power of creation each one of us holds. It awakens us to possibility outside of what we see before us. Empires and religions have colluded for centuries to separate us from our imaginations, ensure that our time is all accounted for, and punish those who dare to seek a direct connection with divine, generative, creative power, unsanctioned by a proper authority.
What those people don’t seem to realize is that the world continues to turn under them. Another image comes to mind: someone walking on a rolling ball (I seem to be on a slapstick cartoon theme here). If they stand still, they don’t stay on top; they get steamrolled underneath. In order to retain your balance, you must keep moving. Staying stuck and refusing the change that is inevitable keeps us in fear and is a surefire way of getting crushed by the future instead of actively participating in its birthing.
The only way to intentionally build the future is to do the same in the present. The Future isn’t this mythical place that appears one day, holding all of our hopes and dreams, fully formed. We create it in the present. As Rabbi Hillel says in the Talmud: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? When I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” The present is all we have, this precious sliver glimmering between the future and the past. And how we choose to use it determines the rest.