Are we living in the PAST?

What is it to be in the present? "Live in the moment". How often do we come across the statement? But what it is to be in the present. Sitting under the night sky looking at the stars is the kind of peace everyone enjoys. Would you say it as being in the present? On a rainy day, sitting on the windowsill, hearing the raindrops fall to the ground, listening to your favourite playlist. Would you associate with being in the present? 

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Is there a present? Or is it just our perception of the present? We tend to assume time as a constant. But it is really based on sensory modalities. We are actually always in the past. Looking at the stars, did you ever think that you are actually looking at the past? The twinkling star must have met its destruction many millions of years ago. Even the moon is 1.3 seconds in the past. Even the object that is a meter away from you is 3.3 nanoseconds in the past. The speed of sound is 344 m/s, again, a source of sound that is 1 meter away takes around 2.9 milliseconds to reach your audio sensory. This might seem very insane, but the most simple example is fireworks. When you are looking at the fireworks from a faraway distance, you would always hear the sound of the firework lagged by some time than the lights. This is exactly what happens with our sensory modalities, some tend to process it faster but are always lagged behind what is supposed to be the absolute present.

The brain is said to be one of the most complicated organs sometimes compared to the present-day supercomputers. But even it takes time to process the inputs being received from the sensors in the body. I wouldn't dive deeper into the technicalities but let's just say, the visual perception also takes some milliseconds (around 100 to 300 milliseconds to process visual information). The chills of the cold winds on a winter day are the past you are feeling. Even the thoughts you are having are lagged since even thinking takes some time to process. Even when you are reading this, you are basically looking at something in the past.

It is just the perception of our cognition that we tend to assume we are in the present. But we are actually living in the past. You could argue that it is just a few milliseconds or nanoseconds and that is insignificant. But this is what is happening all the time. Every single second of time that we feel is constant is just the past lagged by some time. And it is never the absolute present. 

With this, I had one other thought. What is it then that is absolute in this world? If you think of it, nothing. 

- Sushant Thotakura