Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off. The experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life. — Joseph Campbell
Time is an epiphenomenon.
It is the residue of the space between our memories.
A string of pearls.
Seconds are a filament of short-term memory traces decaying.
Days and years are constellation lines of long-term memory hieroglyphs carved into our hippocampus.
There is no time before we are able to form memories, nor after.
So the tender child, the addled elder and the enlightened monk all know the same truth:
There is only a glimmering shimmering fizzing whizzing NOW.
All the rest is commentary.
Find more of my writing about memory and our sense of time here and here
Time isn't a river we're floating down, but the ghost our memories leave behind. This makes me think of how babies and people with dementia live in that eternal present. They're not missing out on time; they're just not building those pearl string memories we call the past.
It's a new week.
Let's do this thing.
Forever is a long long time, when you're a memory. - Neil Young