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Language holds many subtle clues about time.

The Many Tongues of Time

There are countless proverbs about time, and depending on the language and country, they reveal different relationships to it. In some cultures, the very idea of time is fundamentally different.

We often assume time flows like a river: linear, unidirectional, carving its way from past to future. This Western notion, rooted in Judeo-Christian narratives of creation and redemption, positions time as a straight line of progress—a timeline we mark with clocks and calendars. Yet anthropology reveals this as a myth—one among many temporal frameworks shaped by culture and environment.

Even the way we express now is deeply cultural. In German, jetzt feels firm, immediate. In French, maintenant—literally "holding in the hand"—suggests something we try to grasp. Japanese gives us ima (今), a simple and immediate character used often in Zen contexts. Hebrew has achshav (עכשיו), rooted in thought and immediacy. Swahili distinguishes between sasa (now) and baadaye (in a moment), a word that seems to gesture gently toward what's coming. Arabic’s al-aan means now, but carries the weight of divine presence. Spanish offers ahora (now) and ahorita—a word that stretches from “right this second” to “whenever it happens,” depending on the speaker’s tone and context.

These expressions aren’t just linguistic habits—they are reflections of how cultures relate to the present. Whether as something solid, fleeting, sacred, or stretchable, each word reveals a lived philosophy of time.

Consider the Aymara people of the Andes, who conceptualize time in reverse to the Western model. For them, the past lies ahead—visible and known—while the future trails behind, unseen and uncertain. Gestures reinforce this: speakers point forward to recount history, backward for what is yet to come. This inversion challenges our default assumptions, reminding us that time’s "direction" is not inherent but imposed by worldview.

Temporal Landscapes Across Cultures

Across the globe, cultures diverge in viewing time as linear or cyclical. Indigenous traditions often embrace cycles, where events recur in patterns akin to seasons or celestial orbits. The Hopi people of North America, for instance, conceptualize time not through tenses of past, present, and future, but as a continuum of manifested and unmanifested events—more a spatial unfolding than a temporal march. Though debated by linguists like Ekkehart Malotki, who argued Hopi grammar includes temporal markers, the cultural emphasis remains on holistic processes rather than segmented intervals.

In Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, time unfolds in vast yuga cycles—epochs of creation, preservation, and dissolution repeating eternally, like the wheel of samsara. A single yuga spans millions of years, dwarfing human lifespans and underscoring impermanence. This cyclical view aligns deeply with meditation, attuning practitioners to recurring rhythms of breath and mindfulness, dissolving the illusion of linear striving.

Some societies prioritize the eternal now over past or future. Zen Buddhism embodies this in the concept of the "eternal now"—a timeless presence where enlightenment unfolds in the immediacy of experience. Dogen Zenji, the 13th-century Japanese master, taught that time is being itself, each moment complete and boundless.

African Ubuntu philosophy extends this to communal temporality: "I am because we are," where time is relational, woven through shared interactions rather than individual clocks. In Ubuntu, presence emerges from interconnectedness, echoing Polynesian "island time"—a fluid, event-oriented flow where schedules yield to relational harmony and natural cues. Here, unscheduled presence fosters wisdom, much like a meditative pause amid digital haste.

Many cultures attune time to nature's cycles. Scandinavian seasonal living navigates extreme light variations, with winter’s darkness inviting introspection and summer’s midnight sun extending communal activity. Indigenous agricultural calendars, from Australian Aboriginal seasons to ancient Egyptian Nile floods, divide time by ecological markers—planting, harvest, renewal—rather than by arbitrary segments. These frameworks reconnect us to the rhythms of the earth, countering the alienation of screen-bound lives.

 

Shaping Time Through Culture

But there's more. Even the way we spatialize time differs.

In English, we say the future is ahead and the past is behind. In Mandarin, it's common to say the past is above and the future below. Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre, an Indigenous Australian language, don't describe time in relation to the body at all—they orient it to cardinal directions. If they're facing east, the future is to their right; if they turn north, it shifts in space accordingly. Time becomes not a private mental axis but a navigational map tied to the land.

While in Bali, I learned the expression Jam Karet. It translates to “Time is a rubber band.” People said this when they came late and wanted to let off the steam of any expectations. It wasn’t just an excuse—it was a worldview. A shared understanding that time, like a rubber band, could stretch to fit the moment. That what mattered wasn’t precision, but presence.

This shows how deeply our perception of time is entangled with our physical and cultural context. We don’t just pass through time—we construct it, with metaphors, with movement, with story.

Modern neuroscience supports this: our brain's sense of time is more like storytelling than stopwatch. It pieces together sequences, weights events by emotion, and edits memory like a narrative. That’s why time can stretch or shrink depending on attention and meaning. Boredom makes minutes feel eternal. Awe can suspend it. Trauma freezes it.

Perhaps that’s why rituals matter so much. They mark time not by utility, but by depth. They slow it, sanctify it, give it shape.

TAOO emerged from this very impulse.

If languages encode time through metaphors—lines, directions, tension—TAOO seeks a universal dialect: weight, gravity, impulse, color and touch.
Physics is a language beyond words, understood by the body and in every culture.