The concept of time has been around for quite a while. The earliest records of time date back to the 3rd millenium BC with the ancient Egyptian thinker Ptahhotep, who stated, "Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit." The Vedas, early texts on Hindu philosophy dating back to the 2nd millenium BC, also allude to time in describing how the universe undergoes repeated cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years.
There is a book called The Power Of Now (2) which contains several points regarding time that are worth considering. In this book, an extremely subjective view of time is adopted by the author, Eckhart Tolle; in fact, he denies the past and future any existence whatsoever, and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of focusing on "the Now":
Probably more than any other animal, humans have been enormously successful in populating the planet and modifying their environment to suit their own needs, a fact that is due in no small part to their their extensive neocortex - that thin, convoluted structure that envelops the rest of the brain. Put simply, the neocortex probably uses stored memories about the past to make predictions about the future (3). Thus, to entirely ignore any thoughts about the past and future really is akin to largely turning one's back on the use of their neocortex, and therefore one of the main tools - perhaps the main one - that distinguishes the human condition from all other things. So by staying in the now at all times, while one can get rid of negativity, they also run the risk of drifting by refusing to steer their ship in the journey of life; never learning never learning from past mistakes, and never using these experiences to make predictions that allow them to better accomplish future goals.
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