By: Jorge Luis Borges


Translated by: Feride Papleka

St. Augustine: What time is it?

When no one asks me, I know, but when it comes to explaining, I do not know.

There are two theories about time.

It seems to me that the first theory, which coincides with what everyone thinks, considers time as a river.

A river that has flowed since the beginning of time, from the indescribable beginning from the mind of time and that has reached us.

Then, we have the other theory, that of the English metaphysician James Bradley.

The latter says that the opposite happens, that time flows from the future towards the present.

That the moment when the future becomes the past is the moment we call the present.

If we imagine ourselves, if any of you imagined yourself in a dark room, the visible world would disappear, it would also disappear from our body.

How many times would we lose consciousness of our body!… For example, I am now only aware of the hand and the table the moment I touch the table with my hand.

Something happens, but what?

Maybe are the perceptions?

Maybe it's about feelings, or just memories and imagination?

Anyway something happens.

(…) Time is a fundamental problem.

I mean we can not abstract time.

Our consciousness of passes uninterruptedly from one state to another and this is time, continuity.

It seems to me that Henry Bergson has said that time is the central problem of metaphysics.

If this problem had been solved, everyone else would have been solved.

Let's say between us,

there is no risk that this problem will be solved, that is, we will always remain anxious.

We could say like St. Augustine: “What time is it?

"When no one asks me, I know, but when it comes to explaining, I do not know."

What is eternity?

It is not the sum of our yesterdays, but the yesterdays of all conscious beings.

The whole past, the past that it is not known when it started.

Then the whole present.

That present moment that encompasses all cities, worlds, space between planets.

And then the future that is not yet fulfilled, but still exists.

Theologians think that eternity is a moment in which these different times are wonderfully summed up.

We can mention the word of Plato who deeply felt the problem of time.

He says: “There are three times, all three are present.

One is the present, the moment when I speak, that is, the moment when I have spoken, because this moment already belongs to the past.

Then there is another present, the present of the slip they call memory.

Let's take the present moment.

What is the current moment?

It is the moment that contains a little past and a little future.

The present in itself does not exist, it is not an immediate clue to our consciousness.

So we have this present and we see that gradually it is becoming the past, becoming the future.

The idea of ​​the future would validate Plato's early idea, that time is the moving image of that which is eternal.

If time is the image of what is eternal, the future would be, therefore, the movement of the soul towards the future.

The future, in turn, would be, the return of what is eternal.

Our life would be, thus, an uninterrupted agony.

When St. Paul says: I die every day, this is not the pathetic image.

We die and are born incessantly.

This is why the problem of time affects us more than other metaphysical problems.

Because other metaphysical problems are abstract, the problem of time is our problem.

Who am I?

Who are we?

Maybe one day we will learn.

Maybe not.

But in the meantime, as St. Augustine says, my soul burns because I want to know.