Some time ago, I wrote a blog called Don’t Let Time Capture You (in Dutch). In it, I tried to understand that strange phenomenon that determines our entire lives and yet remains almost impossible to grasp. A minute always lasts sixty seconds and an hour always sixty minutes, while our experience of time seems to care very little about that fact. A beautiful evening can be over before you even realize it has properly begun. A difficult day can seem to last forever. Just when we want to hold on to time, it flies by. When we long for an unpleasant moment to end, the clock suddenly seems to have lost all sense of urgency.
At the end of that blog, I arrived at a thought that I still find meaningful
Don’t let yourself be captured by time, capture the moment.
Recently, that thought unexpectedly returned to me. The reason actually came from two different conversations. Mimah said three simple words to me when I wanted to look ahead and know what the future might bring for us: “Time will tell”. Around the same time, I heard Mark, the man behind Walking Is The Best Medicine, talk about the importance of living in the present. Two thoughts that initially seemed separate gradually moved closer together in my mind. They took me back to my earlier blog about time and made me reconsider what I had written then.
What do we actually mean when we say that we should live in the present? Can we possibly live anywhere else? And how much influence do we really have over a future whose shape can ultimately only be revealed by time?
That first question stayed with me particularly after listening to Mark. We often say it to each other. “Live in the present”. Enjoy today. Don’t worry too much about tomorrow. It sounds like an attitude towards life that we can teach ourselves, as though we can choose whether to live in yesterday, today or tomorrow.
In reality, there is nowhere else we cán live!
Yesterday no longer exists. Tomorrow does not exist yet. The only moment in which I exist, think, feel, act, love, grieve, desire or doubt is this moment. Even when my thoughts are completely occupied with yesterday, I am thinking about yesterday today. When I worry about next week, I am worrying now. When I long for something that could become reality a year from now, that longing exists entirely in the present.
Even the present itself is almost impossible to grasp. While I am forming a thought, the moment in which that thought arose is already disappearing into the past. The present seems to be an impossibly thin boundary between two places beyond our reach. On one side lies everything that has happened and can never be changed. On the other lies everything still to come, whose shape remains unknown to us.
Yet we spend an extraordinary amount of our time in both.
We can keep thinking about choices we made yesterday. About words we wish we had spoken differently. About people we miss, opportunities that have passed, experiences we would love to relive. The past can shape us, teach us, comfort us and hurt us, but we simply cannot change it.
We often treat the future as though it is easier to control. We make plans, set goals, book holidays, make appointments and try to use our choices to give direction to what lies ahead. There is nothing wrong with that. Looking forward is part of being human. Without plans, many beautiful things would never happen.
We simply have a tendency to confuse plans with certainty.
While thinking about all this, I was sitting in my taxi driving home. I knew roughly how long the journey would take. Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen at most. I could quite easily say that I would be home in fifteen minutes. I knew the distance, I knew the route, and the traffic gave me no reason to expect anything different.
Yet I did not know for certain.
Anything could happen along the way. A lorry could suddenly cross my path. The van could break down. An accident could block the road. A phone call could make me change direction. The likelihood of simply arriving home was far greater than all those other possibilities, yet one hundred per cent certainty simply did not exist. That ordinary example actually says a great deal about the way we deal with the future. We can choose a direction. We can act wisely. We can create circumstances that make the outcome we desire more likely. We can keep our hands on the steering wheel and pay attention to the road ahead. We can never completely determine the outcome.
That applies to a taxi journey, and it applies even more strongly to the bigger things in life. That is where those three words from Mimah return.
Time will tell.
Those words can feel deeply unsatisfying when you want to know where you stand. When something feels valuable, you want to know whether it will last. When you feel love, you want to know where that love is going. When you have shared a wonderful time together and feel that you would like it to continue, the desire to look ahead arises almost naturally.
Where will we be later? What will this become? Where will it take us? Time will tell.
For me, those words acquired a very personal meaning. I had ended a relationship, and that created space in my mind for a future with Mimah. We have been together, we went on holiday together, and we shared an incredibly beautiful time. A time in which it became easy to look further ahead and long for more of something that felt so good.
I would like to continue.
That future is not available for us to read today.
Mimah captured that in those three words: Time will tell.
At first, it can sound as though you are surrendering the future. As though you can sit back and wait for time to eventually reveal how the story ends. There is something fatalistic about that idea that does not appeal to me. I do believe our choices matter.
A relationship does not stay alive simply because two people once said they loved each other. Love requires attention. It requires time, interest, honesty, space and a willingness to keep seeing each other for who we are. Someone who invests nothing in a relationship while expecting it to continue flourishing places responsibility in the wrong hands.
The future grows partly out of what we do today.
However much love, attention and good intention we give today, we cannot dictate what tomorrow will look like. We can do our best. We can treat what matters to us with care. We can make choices that fit the future we hope for. Beyond that, part of what happens will always remain outside our control.
That realisation can create uncertainty but it can also bring a sense of peace.
I do not need to know today what my life will look like a year from now. I do not need an immediate answer to every question the future raises. I am allowed to long for something that does not yet exist without demanding that it already becomes a certainty today.
I can only do what lies within my reach in my now…
Today I can give attention to the people I love. Today I can say what needs to be said. Today I can listen when someone is trying to tell me something. Today I can work on what matters to me. Today I can enjoy a conversation, a walk, a meal, a touch, a drive, silence or simply being together.
When I make plans for tomorrow, I make those plans today.
That also changes the way I look at my earlier thought about capturing the moment. A moment is ultimately as impossible to capture as time itself. The instant we try to hold on to it, it has already passed. We do not need to search for the present either. We are already right in the middle of it.
The real question is what we do with it.
We can fill the present with regret about something that can no longer be changed. We can fill it with fear of something that has not happened. We can long so intensely for the future we imagine that we barely notice what is already in front of us today.
The past, present and future each have their own place.
We can carry the past with us. We can learn from it and give it a place in our lives. We can approach the future with dreams, plans and expectations. The present gives us the opportunity to actually do something.
That is where our influence lies.
This does not mean that we have to be happy every moment. Life contains sadness, longing, uncertainty and pain. Those experiences exist in the present too, and they deserve their space. Living in the present increasingly means, for me, being present with what is actually here, without constantly measuring today against what once was or what we believe still needs to come.
That is where Mark’s and Mimah’s thoughts meet for me.
Mark made me think about the only moment in which we can truly live. Mimah made me think about everything that comes afterwards and about our desire to have certainty about it already. Somewhere between those two thoughts lies our entire life. We exist today while continually trying to give direction to a tomorrow we cannot yet know.
That is where I find the peace in those three words.
Time will tell.
They do not have to be an excuse for doing nothing. They do not have to mean surrendering ourselves to a fate over which we have no influence. They can simply acknowledge that not every question needs an answer today.
We are allowed to build without knowing what the finished building will eventually look like. We are allowed to love without a guarantee that it will last a lifetime. We are allowed to make plans knowing that plans can change. We are allowed to hope without turning the future into a promise. And we are even allowed to enjoy the feeling of missing someone or something.
That last thought may sound strange at first, yet I increasingly find something beautiful in it. We do not miss someone or something for no reason. We miss a person because that person means something to us. We miss a moment because it was beautiful. We miss a touch, a conversation, a holiday, an evening together or simply someone’s presence because we would love to experience it again. Something valuable therefore lives within the feeling of missing.
Missing someone can hurt. At the same time, that very feeling can take me back to what I experienced. To a moment I apparently enjoyed so deeply that I long to experience it again. Missing something also tells us about what actually existed. About love, connection, joy and memories valuable enough to make us long for them again.
We are allowed to enjoy that too. We can recognise where the feeling comes from and allow the memory to bring warmth into the present. The past cannot become the present again, while a memory can still touch us today. Even missing someone can become part of living in the now.
Half a year ago, I wrote that we should not allow ourselves to be captured by time and that we should capture the moment. Today, I would phrase that thought a little differently.
Let the moment simply be what it is.
Look at what is in front of you today. Take care of it. Give it your attention. Love. Make plans. Dare to dream. Cherish what matters and accept that not every question needs an answer today. And when you miss something or someone, take a moment to consider why that feeling exists. Somewhere within it, there is probably a moment valuable enough to still awaken something in you today.
Tomorrow does not exist yet. When it arrives, we will call it today again and what all those days will eventually tell us together?
