The apple and the time
How an apple taught me to understand time to …
It was a completely ordinary morning. In my kitchen my gaze fell on a9> an apple in the fruit bowl – nothing special, one might think. But something had changed. The apple, a few days ago still plump, shiny and fresh, showed now first traces on its skin, a slight shrivelling, a darker spot near the stem. And in this inconspicuous moment it struck me a realisation like a silent flash of lightning …
The time is not anywhere — it is right here: in this apple and in everything else too.
Actually it was about a workshop that I designed as a training opportunity for architects. The title: “The art of shaping your own future to suit you!” – “Shaping the future” – what a big word. Yes, I admit it: I love sometimes emotional phrases and I love the two words “future” and “shaping” and what lies behind them.
Was lag da näher als, sie zusammenzubringen. Als Architekt gehe ich naturgemäß recht souverän mit Gestaltung um, denn ein Großteil der Ausbildungszeit als Architekt:in verbringt man mit Fragen der Gestalt und der Gestaltung von Objekten. Das ist ein sehr komplexes Feld und eine wirklich fundiert gute Gestaltung trennt gute Architektur von mittelmäßiger und natürlich von schlechter Architektur. Fachkolleg:innen wissen das nur zu gut und ringen oftmals lange um eine gute Gestalt.
However, here we will focus on the other term: future. Here it becomes more difficult, even more difficult, one must actually say. A well-known quote by Albert Einstein shows that we are in good company with this topic. He dealt with from the perspective of physicists with the difference from the past, present and future and said about this: “The distinction between past, present and future is (only) a particularly persistent illusion!”
My approach seems at first rather trivial, because as an everyday-oriented person, I would like to perhaps take action and find out what needs to be done and would like to know what to do in order to shape my future. But hardly has the question “Can I shape my future and if so, how?” asked, she stops, trivial to be.
When we find ourselves in a phase of self-reflection we are, our gaze wanders, that is, our memories often drift into the past: Was what was good in the past? Would I like to continue as before?
What now? – Do we need a plan? – I think we need an awareness of that the third dimension, the present, plays a decisive role here. Even if Einstein’s theorem of the illusion of the difference still haunts our minds, there is in lived and to live life only this one dimension, in which we act and make a difference can make. I really like this sentence from the Dalai Lama in this context: There are only two days in your life, in which you can be happy or unhappy. a2> two days in your life when you can’t change anything. The one is yesterday and the other is tomorrow!”
Hereby I would like to return to the apple at the beginning of the story.
We often talk about time as if it were a river flowing by us. which flows past us. The past lies behind us, the future lies ahead of us, and the present seems only a narrow ridge between to be. But while I was looking at this apple, it became clear to me that this division is an invention of our minds – an attempt to organise the incomprehensible. Time itself knows no calendars and no clocks. It is not a line, on which we walk go.
This is the Greek concept of Chronos: measurable, linear time that continuously slips away and is irretrievably lost gone. Quite different in contrast Kairos, also a Greek concept of time. Here it is about the quality, the effect and the moment of being. Both concepts together describe our perceived reality very well: time is transience and therefore change and change is quality.
The apple clearly showed me: the so-called future had long since arrived. It had crept silently through its matter and penetrated it, had shaped him. Not at some point, but in every single moment, continuously, unstoppably. The future does not come – it arises in this very moment. And it does not appear as a great event on the horizon, but as
Past? These are memories, traces in us, stored experiences. Future? Projections, hopes, worries, plans. Both exist only in our thinking. Truly real, tangible, tangible is only this one moment – now.
And precisely in this moment lies our strength. It is the only moment in which we act, decide, shape can. The apple had no choice – it could not stop the change. But we humans have the ability to consciously to become, to pause, to recognise. We can “only” shape the present – through our attitude, our words, our actions. And thus we shape what we admittedly now call the future, but later our present will be ours.
The apple in my bowl was not just a snack or a piece of fruit, but a treat. snack or a piece of fruit, which I had forgotten . He was a quiet teacher. He showed me that time does not come at some point or was – but that it
And that we would do well to live consciously in this moment – because it is all that we really have. Past, present, future. Where is the difference? Einstein sends his regards.
Carsten Hokema
