An Essay on Time, Realism, and the Present

One moment we’re chiding ourselves for a mistake that is long over; the next, we’re daydreaming about an event that hasn’t happened yet. We carry responsibility for yesterday as if it were still here, and we invest hope in tomorrow as if we could already see it. Yet philosophers and physicists alike often insist that only now truly exists – the past is gone, the future not yet real. Some even say time itself is just an illusion. It’s enough to leave anyone quietly uneasy: if the past is truly nothing and the future a fantasy, why do they weigh so heavily on us? This everyday confusion speaks to a basic tension in how we think about time. Even St. Augustine confessed his bafflement 1,600 years ago: “I know what time is if no one asks; but if anyone does, then I cannot explain it.” We live through time so intimately, yet when we stop to analyze it, we risk losing our grip on what it means.
Two Ways to See Time, Both Incomplete
Philosophers have long debated the reality of the past and future. One intuitive view – often called presentism – says that only the present moment is real; anything in the past no longer exists, and anything in the future does not exist yet. On this view, all that truly is happens in the here and now. It sounds sensible at first: after all, we only directly experience the present. But taken strictly, presentism draws a hard line through time – yesterday and tomorrow become nothing more than ideas or memories. If only the present exists, it becomes mysterious how we can still be guided by the past or obligated to the future. How can a prior event that no longer exists continue to leave effects, memories, or records in its wake? And how can we prepare for a future that’s truly nonexistent? Reducing reality to a flickering now threatens to make a mockery of our experience of continuity and responsibility.
At the other extreme is the view known as eternalism, which holds that the past, present, and future all exist in an equally real sense. This picture treats time as a four-dimensional “block” in which every event – from the age of the dinosaurs to your future grandchildren – is fixed in existence. If presentism was intuitive, eternalism can be mind-bending: it means that in addition to what’s happening now, events in 1990 or 2090 are just as real as this moment. Some find solace in this – it gives the past and future a kind of lasting footing. But it comes with its own puzzles. If tomorrow already exists out there, why can’t we see it or reach into it? Why are we apparently locked into experiencing only a single moment – this one – if all moments exist equally? In a fully eternalist world, the flow of time and the special feeling of “now” become hard to explain at all. Essentially, one view privileges the present at the expense of past and future, while the other preserves an all-encompassing timeline at the expense of the very notion of a flowing, living present. Each side captures an intuition about time, yet each does so by denying something else we know to be true in our lives.
It’s no wonder, then, that many people feel torn about how to think of time. Are we supposed to act as if only this instant matters, treating our memories and plans as illusions? Or should we imagine that every moment – even ones long gone or yet to come – exists in a static eternity, with our sense of “now” being a kind of stubborn illusion? Neither option sits well with how we actually experience things. The present is uniquely vivid, the arena of our immediate experience and action. And yet the non-present – what has been and what will be – still calls out to us, still shapes us. We need a way to make sense of this: to understand how the past and future can matter so much even if they aren’t currently happening. Is it possible we’ve been framing the question poorly? Perhaps the mistake is assuming we must choose between denying the reality of the past/future or denying the uniqueness of the present. Maybe the past and future can be real without existing in the same way the present does.
Real but Not Present: A Different View of Time
One way to dissolve this impasse is to rethink what we mean by “exist” and “real.” We often use these words as if they were synonyms – as if not existing now means not being real at all. But consider an alternative: only the present exists, in the sense of being currently happening, yet past and future remain real in their own ways. In everyday terms, “existence” could be reserved for what is here right now, while “reality” extends beyond the present moment. The past and future don’t exist in the present – you can’t touch Napoleon, and you can’t shake hands with your future grandchild today – but those times are still real insofar as they can affect us, constrain us, or matter to us.
What would it mean for something to be real but not present? It means that it’s part of the world’s story, even if its chapter is not the one currently being written. Think of the past: when an event passes, it transitions from existence to reality in the sense that it no longer unfolds now, yet it remains real as a contribution to how things are. A childhood trauma, a joyous wedding day, last year’s scientific discovery – these things do not exist now, not as events happening. But they are undeniably real as past facts. They have left traces in the world and in us. They can constrain what’s possible going forward, and they certainly orient our present choices (through lessons learned or lingering responsibilities). In a similar way, the future can be real to us before it exists. When astronomers calculate a solar eclipse for next year, that event is real enough that we can mark it on our calendars; its reality consists in being a definite expected happening under the laws of astronomy, even though it will only exist when its time comes. On a more personal level, if you are expecting a baby, that unborn child does not exist in the world yet – but the future reality of that child already shapes your emotions and plans in the present. The crib is bought, the name picked out; the future exertion of reality is felt now as hope and preparation.
In this view, reality is like an expanding tapestry or an ongoing story. The present is the active, illuminated scene – the only place where things actually take place. But the scenes that have passed are not deleted; they become the earlier chapters that still inform the narrative. And scenes yet to come cast their shadows and guide the direction of the plot. Reality is the whole story, not just the sentence being written now. Only that current sentence “exists” in the strictest sense, but the rest of the story is no less real for being earlier or later in the book. By separating existence and reality in this way, we allow the past and future to matter without pretending that they are current. We no longer have to say, for example, that a past event is nothing simply because it isn’t happening now. It’s real – it occurred, and its consequences are woven into the present – even though it does not exist in the present. Likewise, a future event can be real as a possibility or tendency that is already forming, without yet existing as an actual event.
Crucially, this approach doesn’t violate our common sense that only action in the present can change things. It agrees that we can only do things now; the present remains the exclusive domain of existence and action. But it also validates our sense that we are not cut off from the rest of time. We live in a continuum where the reality of what was and what could be constantly shapes what is. For example, consider memory and history: We keep photographs of a loved one who has passed away. Technically, that person’s life no longer exists in the present world. Yet we feel their absence precisely because their reality persists – in our memory, in the mark they left on us, in the chain of events that their life set in motion. We build memorials and write history books because past events, though not present, remain part of reality and demand our recognition. We are, in a sense, still in dialogue with those past events; they can inspire pride, remorse, or lessons. Similarly, think of responsibility and regret. If you broke a promise to a friend last week, that moment is gone – you cannot find it anywhere now. But its reality confronts you in the form of guilt and the resolve to make amends. You feel responsible for that past deed precisely because, though the deed isn’t happening anymore, it is real enough to have moral weight. The world in which you broke the promise is the same world you live in today, and that fact calls for repair. We behave as if the past is still in some sense real – and on this view, that instinct is telling the truth.
Now consider *anticipation and promise. Every time we make a plan or a promise, we are treating the future as a kind of reality we can interact with. Imagine you promise a child a trip to the amusement park next month. That future day doesn’t exist yet; you couldn’t go there with a time machine and find it. But it is real enough that it obliges you in the present. You organize your schedule and save money because of that not-yet-existent day. If the day comes and you break your promise, you feel you’ve done wrong – even before it comes, you would feel anxiety at the thought of disappointing the child. Our commitments only make sense if the future has a reality we can be faithful to. Likewise, we fear future dangers (climate change, a looming deadline) and hope for future goods (a graduation, a cure for an illness) as if the future in some way already exists in outline. In this framework, that “as if” can be dropped: the future is real, not as a completed fact but as a field of possibilities that press in on the present. We navigate by the stars of possibility just as we are steered by the gravity of history.
This way of thinking lets us resolve the earlier tension. We no longer have to pretend that the past is an illusion or the future a mere fantasy. We also don’t have to imagine that all of time is frozen and given (which left us wondering why we feel time’s movement so keenly). Instead, we say: the present alone exists, but past and future are real. The reality of other times comes from their power to influence, orient, and constrain the present. They are part of the universe’s fabric, just in a different mode than the slice of reality we call “now.” This idea might sound abstract, but it’s basically how we live already. We constantly treat non-present things as real – from paying respects at a grave (acknowledging a life that was real) to drafting laws that will impact generations unborn (acknowledging futures that will be real). We do these things naturally, but standard theories of time hadn’t fully accounted for why it makes sense. By distinguishing what exists now from what is real overall, we can finally make sense of our temporal experience without denying any of it.
Living in Real Time
By now, this perspective likely feels intuitive: it hasn’t given us a new dogma about time so much as permission to trust our lived experience of it. Near the end of such reflections, one might give this view a name – philosophers love naming things – but here the name is less important than the insight. If one insists on a label, it is simply a realist view of time that gives the present a distinctive role without denying the reality of other moments. The payoff of this outlook is not a fancy theory, but a kind of relief. It tells us that our ordinary sense of being stretched between past and future is not a mistake or a metaphysical oddity, but a clue to how time really works for us.
We can finally explain why, for example, we feel moral weight from the past. A wrong you did years ago doesn’t haunt you because you’re irrationally clinging to a non-existent phantom; it haunts you because the deed is real in the world’s timeline and in your own story. You may not be able to alter the fact that it happened (only the present exists, and that moment of action is gone), but you can respond to its reality – apologize, make reparations, learn and change. Likewise, the future can guide and inspire us without being “already here.” Its reality lies in the realm of possibility and expectation. We hope, plan, and fear precisely because we sense that the future is not just a blank nothingness. We know our plans can succeed or fail, our warnings can avert disaster or go unheeded – outcomes will solidify into reality if we’re not careful. In short, the future matters to us now because it is part of reality’s makeup, drawing us forward. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, human beings survive the uncertainty of the future by making promises – creating “islands of security” in the “ocean of uncertainty” that the future inherently is. And we cope with the unchangeability of the past through forgiveness – which, as Arendt says, serves to release us from what is done, so that we aren’t forever prisoners of a single past act. Without the ability to be forgiven, she warned, we “would remain the victims” of our past deeds forever; without the binding force of promises, we would be “condemned to wander… without direction” in an unpredictable future. Our lives constantly reach backward and forward in exactly these ways, repairing the past and preparing for the future.
Ultimately, recognizing that the past and future are real (even if only the present exists) reorients us to why time matters at all. It isn’t just a trap we’re stuck in or a trick being played on us – it’s the dimension of reality that makes growth, responsibility, and hope possible. The present is where we live and act, but it doesn’t float in isolation. It sits at the meeting point of what has been real and what will be real. Understanding this can deepen our appreciation for how we should live our lives. It reminds us why the past can still claim us – why debts incurred long ago or sacrifices made by those before us still hold meaning that we must honor. It explains why the future can guide us – why our vision of a better world or a looming threat calls us to action now, shaping our choices before that future even arrives. And it illuminates how we, as individuals and communities, live forward through time: not in a disconnected series of present moments, but through an unfolding reality that we inherit, sustain, and bequeath. We live in real time – a time where every present moment carries the legacy of a real past and the promise of a real future. And that makes our fleeting present all the more significant, knowing it is the ever-moving frontier where reality grows.