Time Isn’t Real, But This Moment Is

Sometimes, I feel like time is chasing me.

Deadlines. Memories. Regrets. Hope.

There’s always something just behind me, or just ahead, pulling me out of the now.

But when I sit… when I really sit… time stops being a hallway. It becomes a room.

Quantum physics backs this up in the strangest, most beautiful ways. It tells us time isn’t linear. It bends. It wobbles. It can even run backwards depending on how you observe it. In some interpretations, everything that’s ever happened, and everything that will, is already encoded in the now.

Zen figured this out without the math.

In zazen, there’s no future. No past. No clock on the wall. Just breath, sensation, and a kind of eternal flicker happening behind the eyes. Time thins out until only this moment exists. And in that moment, you’re not late. You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re free.

I used to think the present was a place I had to arrive at, like a destination on the calendar. But now I understand, it’s all there ever is. The rest is memory and forecast. The rest is fiction.

But don’t get me wrong: this doesn’t mean time is bad. Time is useful. It’s how we schedule dentist appointments and make soup. But it’s not real in the way we think it is. It’s not fixed. It’s not yours to hoard. It’s not a punishment for being born.

So what happens when we stop trying to escape the now and start living inside it?

We grieve differently. We age differently. We love differently.

We become less concerned with how long things take and more in touch with what they feel like.

A two-minute breath can change your life.

A moment of eye contact can change your day.

One instant of stillness can reveal eternity.

So no, time isn’t real.

But this moment? This breath?

This is the whole universe, unzipped and shining.

And you are here for it.

Right now.