The Story Called Time

“And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.”

— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

A Story We Keep Telling

The story of time plays endlessly in us all. It deceives us, enchants us, seduces us, mocks us.

And yet —
Each morning, we step into the narrative again, exiting the non-linear world of dreams and grounding ourselves in what feels like a timeline. We place meaning in this story. We orient our lives by it. All while knowing full well the illusoriness of this story.

Where Is Yesterday?

Is yesterday real?

Our story-informed answer would confidently say: “Of course!”

But if it’s real… where is it?

You’ll find traces — memories, impressions, consequences — but not the thing itself. Yesterday cannot be touched, revisited, or pointed to. It exists only in the mind — no more "real" than the last novel you read.

The Pages Ahead

Perhaps it's easier to conceive of the illusoriness of the future, since we haven’t read that part of the story yet. Still, we project toward it constantly — we worry, we hope, we plan.

But have you ever arrived in the future?

The future is the great canvas of all our anxieties, hopes, and dreams — yet, we never arrive there. We only ever arrive here.

Now

There is one small slice of this story that refuses to dissolve under scrutiny: Now.

Where is now? It’s here. It’s all around you. You can’t escape it, no matter how hard you try.

Unlike memories or expectations, now doesn’t require thought. It doesn’t need a concept to exist. If we were to strip away our intellect — forget words, forget logic — we might lose the ability to think about the past or the future entirely. But now would remain. No conception required. It’s not a part of the timeline — it’s the backdrop against which all timelines are imagined.

Then, Here, There

Now this story of ours blurs the line between then, here, and there. It treats them as different points on this linear path. But this is an illusion. The concepts of past and future are just that -- concepts. The experience of now is incomparable to these ideas. Take our intellect out of the equation, and we may lack the ability to conceive of the future entirely. But we always have access to "now" -- no conceptualizing required.

Without thought, the “past” and “future” lose form. The present moment — unlike those concepts — stands firm. Now is self-evident; we don't need to place it on a linear timeline to give it meaning, it has intrinsic meaning as a matter of experience.

And if the framework of time dissolves, perhaps so do the walls that depend on it: Separation. Judgment. Suffering.

Returning to the Mystery

So let’s return to Hesse’s words:

“If time is not real, then the dividing line... is also an illusion.”

The boundary between good and evil. Between sorrow and joy. Between this world and eternity. These are not fixed lines — but illusions stitched together by a story called time.

So what remains when we stop telling the story? Not a belief. Not a thought. Not an answer. Only this. Only Now.