The passing of time

Time has always been mysterious. Philosophers, scientists, psychologists and many other people over several centuries have attempted to understand it. Fortunately, the more it was explored, the more some of its mystery was uncovered.

Typically, time is understood by a common standard set on our watches, phones and clocks, which everyone follows throughout the day for appointments and schedules. This is often referred to as clock time, but it is not actual time.

Einstein discovered that time and space are not separate, meaning time is united with space and space with time. So, to understand time we must also include space. This might seem closer to understanding actual time, but combining time and space seems to add to the mystery. This is referred to as spacetime.

Einstein's discovery of spacetime reveals that clocks far away from the earth's gravity result in changes in clock time compared to the clock time on earth. Although this is fascinating, it only serves to prove that spacetime is not actual time.

We all experience aging. As we age, our bodies and physical conditions change. It's easy to consider aging and time to be united, but just as the unity of space and time is not actual time, aging is not actual time either. This is referred to as biological time.

Then, there is psychological time. We all remember past events and people. We experience the sensation of time passing as we read a book, talk on the phone or meet with a friend for tea. During the experience of an accident, time slows down because our psychology dramatically changes in these moments, but none of these psychological sensations are actual time either. So clearly, time is not easy to understand.

In fact, actual time does not exist at all. In other words, there isn't time outside of ourselves, but due to human beings having always experienced the sun rising and setting, living and dying, and moving from one place to another, a sense of psychological time did develop. But how?

Psychological elements related to common human experiences become part of everyone's psychology and are known as archetypes. For example, from longstanding human experiences, such as the sun rising and setting, the archetype of time developed within our psychologies. It is this psychological archetype that leads us to believe that time exists outside of us, but time only exists within our psychologies.

The psychological archetype of time is our best indicator of time. As a result, if we pay less attention to our clocks and more attention to ourselves, we can make our lives much more meaningful and healthier.