Quotes About Present

If the present has no meaning, then what "exists" in the universe? Is not what "exists" precisely what is here "in the present"? The whole idea that the universe exists now in a certain configuration and changes together with the passage of time simply doesn't stack up anymore.

Augustine's exposition of the idea is quite beautiful. It is based on our experience of music. When we listen to a hymn, the meaning of a sound is given by the ones that come before and after it. Music can occur only in time, but if we are always in the present moment, how is it possible to hear it? It is possible, Augustine observes, because our consciousness is based on memory and on anticipation.

And hence this is what time is: it is entirely in the present, in our minds, as memory and as anticipation.

There is our past: all the events that happened before what we can witness now. There is our future: the events that will happen after the moment from which we can see the here and now. Between this past and this future there is an interval that is neither past nor future and still has a duration: fifteen minutes on Mars; eight years on Proxima b; millions of years in the Andromeda galaxy. It is the expanded present.28 It is perhaps the greatest and strangest of Einstein's discoveries.

What is the 'present'? We say that only the things of the present exist: the past no longer exists and the future doesn't exist yet. But in physics there is nothing that corresponds to the notion of the 'now'.

Our intuitive idea of the present, the ensemble of all events happening "now" in the universe, is an effect of our blindness: our inability to recognize small temporal intervals. An illegitimate extrapolation from our parochial experience.

The expanded present is the set of events that are neither past nor future: it exists, just as there are human beings who are neither our descendants nor our forebears.

If the present has no meaning, then what "exists" in the universe? Is not what "exists" precisely what is here "in the present"?

Even the distinction between present, past, and future thus becomes fluctuating, indeterminate. Just as a particle may be diffused in space, so, too, the differences between past and future may fluctuate: an event may be both before and after another one.

But on the moon, the duration of the "extended present" is a few seconds, and on Mars it is a quarter of an hour. This means we can say that on Mars there are events that in this precise moment have already happened, events that are yet to happen, but also a quarter-of-an-hour of events during which things occur that are neither in our past nor in our future.

O tempo é a minha matéria. O tempo presente, os homens presentes, a vida presente.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

Mindfulness puts you in charge of where you place your attention. Then, when you are less preoccupied with concerns and worries, you have more energy available to attend to your work.

We only have now. nobody really has more than that. The difference is, we know it.

That's because every day is the only day,

There is no better boost in the present than an invitation to the future.

My serotonin surges and Jeff Bezos is a rich man because he knows how much we all just love to get a present, even if it's a present we bought for ourselves.

Live one day at a time. Keep your attention in present time. Have no expectations. Make no judgements. And give up the need to know why things happen as they do. Give it up!

Don't worry about tomorrow or let the past ruin today.

You don't get the guarantee of tomorrow. Today is all you have. Don't waste it worrying. Enjoy it. Don't go stumbling up to the Pearly Gates in your spotless martyr robes. Go sliding up there in a worn-out, used-up body, screaming to the top of your lungs, 'Hallelujah, I made it and I've used everything I had while I was on earth, so open the doors and let me in!' That's the way to live.

There are a couple of reasons why I take comfort in being able to put all this in my own vernacular and present it to you. For one thing, because then I'm not completely alone with it. And for another, it gives me a sense of being in control of the craziness. Now this is a delusion, but it's MY delusion and I'm sticking with it. It's sort of like: I have problems but problems don't have me.

Sometimes that whys aren't knowable, so you just have to ignore the whys, and just focus on what is and move on.

It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us.

It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us. Tragedy & Hope p. 1275