Though famous during his time, the philosopher Henri Bergson is not well known today. This is partly due to a very different viewpoint that he had on understanding the nature of time. In his essay, Time and Free-Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889), he made a distinction between the mechanistic time of science and lived time, which he called ‘real duration’.
I explored a similar theme in my book, Nature’s Zodiac: Beyond the Wheel. I referred to the mechanistic time as the tic-toc of the clock and the lived time as thymos, a biological forwardness. I had not even read Bergson except for some great thoughts he had on laughter as an evolutionary strategy to stay supple. But I recently took a generative approach to a Mercury in Leo transit, sought out thinkers who discuss Leo-like themes (like laughter), and discovered a gold mine of contemplative treasure!
Bergson’s theory is wonderfully straightforward. He says that by superimposing spatial concepts onto time, we have arrived at a distorted version of the real thing. The second hand ticking on a clock becomes a series of separate ‘ticks,’ the movement of a pendulum, and the frames in a movie all have points a, b, and c, and none of this speaks to time’s essential quality, which is that it endures and flows.
Do you ever feel that there isn’t enough time in the day to do what you need to do? Or to do what you want to do? Might there be an error in this kind of time perception? Bergson insisted that time was not quantitative but qualitative. He argued that time has two aspects: “objective time,” which is the time of clocks, calendars, and schedules, and “lived time,” which is our subjective experience of time.
So, rather than thinking that there is not enough time in the day, might we instead view it as not the right quality of time? Not the right kind of forward-movement, flow, or duration?
I believe that we are all born with a special signature of time flow. It is in living our lives that we become aware of it, and with that awareness comes an invitation to cultivate it. Just as there is a right time for certain things to be done, there is also a perpetual right time to perfect within you.
Featured art: On the Thames, A Heron. James Tissot c. 1871-1872
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