Our relationship with time can be oppressive or liberating. It all depends on the eyes and expectations with which we look at the past, the present and the future.
We live inserted in time: to be a person is to exist in history, to grow through the stages marked by the years. And it is healthy to ask ourselves what kind of relationship we have with time: with the past, the present and the future. These three dimensions of existence can become oppressive tyrannies or beautiful gifts, depending on how we relate to them.
The past can be a tyranny, a heavy rock that crushes us and prevents us from growing, when it is filled with suffering—when we are unable to let go and detach our today and our tomorrow from a yesterday cluttered with painful moments. It is common for people with a dark and distressing history to live subdued by the memory of the wounds they suffered: they feel defined, handcuffed, and subjugated by their past; a past they would rather forget and, yet, remains alive in their memories.
In other cases, the past can be a tyranny when the opposite happens and, instead of being a source of painful memories, it is full of joy. Remembering the happiness they savored, some people can chain themselves to their golden past, and fall into a sickly nostalgia that will prevent them from enjoying the present or from having exciting dreams about the future. They live trying to obsessively repeat, over and over again, what they already experienced: «Since my best years are behind me, they tell themselves, I must labor to reproduce them». This nostalgic and futile concern stops us, frustrates us and prevents us from seeing the possibilities offered by the present and the future.
Other people live immersed in the tyranny of the present, when they insist on turning today into the best day of their lives. Today is when I must experience everything, they say: yesterday doesn’t count, because it is gone. And tomorrow is uncertain; therefore, the only real thing is this moment, it is now, and now is when I must fulfill myself to the fullest. Instead of conceiving the present as one more moment between what has already taken place and what is yet to come, some may conceive it as the urgent scenario of a fullness that cannot be postponed. And it is true that yesterday is already gone, and that tomorrow is uncertain, but living without taking them into account, magnifying and exalting the present as the only thing that matters, impoverishes our perspective. The tyranny of the present (the self-imposition of thinking that today I must achieve all my dreams) subjects us to the immediacy of this precise moment, lacking both the wisdom offered by meditation on everything that has already happened to us and the hope that invites us to cultivate what is yet to come. The obligation of having a perfect, wonderful and stimulating present is a pipe dream (and, as such, a source of frustration). There will be times when our now will be beautiful and pleasant, and there will be disappointing, uncomfortable or painful «nows». Today cannot be constantly my best day.
The future can also be a tyranny when the years go by and we keep accumulating experiences of all kinds and, yet we persist in believing that the best is yet to come. We disdain past and present betting all our happiness on a tomorrow that we anticipate undoubtedly bright and shiny. What if it is not so? What if the most beautiful or stimulating or profound thing in your life does not lie in the future, but in the past? We should not stop dreaming, we should not give up having projects; but we surely should be grateful for what we have already experienced. Then, we can reject the tyranny of the future, the obligation to live always projecting ourselves towards what is to come. It is healthy to reject the subtle deception of blindly believing that what is important, significant, and relevant in our journey is yet to happen. It could be so, or not: maybe that trip we made a few years ago, or that extraordinary book I finished yesterday, or that conversation, or that friendship, or this moment of deep intimacy with someone or this hug already lived will be the most beautiful gift that your biography will give you. The constant expectation regarding what is to come can prevent us from calmly enjoying the riches of the present and valuing the joys of the past in their proper measure.
Our relationship with time, in short, can be painful: it is very possible to fall under the tyranny of the past, present or future when we conceive one of these dimensions as the only one that matters (forgetting about the others), and, in addition, we ask from it something that it cannot give us.
Past, present and future, on the other hand, can be an inexhaustible source of joy and a wonderful gift when we conceive them as an interconnected whole (the past is a dimension of the present, according to William Faulkner) and when we ask of each one of them what they can really offers to us.
The past is a gift when we manage to accept that everything we have experienced (from the most beautiful to the saddest) is a school of learning, including the conflicts and disappointments that one day made us suffer. And the years we leave behind are a gift when we manage to accept these sufferings from yesterday as part of our biography... a part of our biography that, although we would rather not have experienced, we can now integrate into our understanding of life, aware that everything (from the happiest to the most disastrous) contains valid teachings. The past is also a gift when we understand that, although the beauty and joy that we once lived should not become reasons for useless nostalgia, they can be a source of satisfaction, and it is healthy to preserve as treasures the memories of so many people who one day accompanied us, of so many gratifying moments that we can contemplate with a deep sense of gratitude. The past is a gift when we understand it as the land where our identity has matured, the workshop where the best of us has been forged, the history full of teachings that equips us to live the present and the future with more wisdom, without repeating mistakes, with serenity. Instead of looking at the past as that time to which we are always forced to return (either because then we suffer wounds that still hurt us, or because we want to recover the good things it gave us), it is possible to live with gratefulness for the experiences accumulated: without denying them their importance, and—at the same time— without exaggerating their role. The past is indeed the architect of our identity, but nothing prevents us from letting go of its most toxic aspects or freeing ourselves from a nostalgia that prevents us from giving ourselves enthusiastically to the present and the future.
The present is a gift when—without expecting that each moment be the most beautiful, the happiest or the richest that we have ever lived—we understand it as the arena in which we can become acutely aware of being alive, and when we see it as the moment in which we can also become aware of the world around us. The present is also the space of creativity where we can carry out something new; the territory where, without forgetting the past, we can go beyond old routines and perhaps reach some level of maturity hitherto unknown. The present is the arena where we can be fully free, the now in which it is possible to put everything we have lived at the service of a renewed effort to fully tune in with our environment, with others, with our interiority... and with God. Because, from a faith-filled standpoint, the present is the moment in which God’s today is manifested, the today that invites us to understand what we are experiencing right now as the stage in which the Father shows us his love, the “today” that Jesus announced in the synagogue of Nazareth after reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: «Today this passage that you have heard has been fulfilled» (Lk 4:21).
And the future is a gift when, while being aware of its fragility and the uncertainties that surround it, we see it as the horizon where perhaps the possibility of further growth will still be given to us. As well as the possibility of finding out more about the meaning of our lives in this world, and to discover new lessons about life, about others or about oneself. The future is the territory of hope, it is the area from which we can expect new beginnings, new encounters, and new projects. The future is the place where we can foresee ourselves as better people, free from the miseries that crippled us yesterday and that perhaps still dwarf us today. The future invites us to dream.
Our relationship with time can be oppressive or liberating. It all depends on the eyes and expectations with which we look at the past, the present and the future.
