Judaism doesn’t understand time as a line proceeding endlessly towards the horizon, but more as circular, or oval, or spiral… and yet still there is only ever the moment we are living in. Because in Hebrew thought time is a function of activity, it does not exist independently but is created by our living it. Our year is punctuated by holy times, Shabbat and the festivals create the weeks and the years. And as each Shabbat we relive both the Creation of the world and the exodus from Egypt, so with each festival does every generation experience for themselves the foundational and formative events of Judaism. There is always only the now, even if it echoes with the “nows” of the past.

The preacher Kohelet tells us that “there is a time for everything under the sun” (Ecc. 3:1-8). And in Hebrew thought we do in effect create that time as we live the “everything”, but what must be of critical importance to us is always the present moment. It is the only time that exists, the only thing we can influence. Our choices in each of the present moments we live create our lives, which can be understood as a vast number of such moments.

The preacher Kohelet may have suggested a time for everything, but another extraordinary Jewish thinker Albert Einstein clarified the focus of such time. In a curious echo of the words of Rabbi Eliezer in Pirkei Avot he wrote “Life is a preparation for the future, and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.” In other words the only way to properly address the future is to be as present as possible in the present. He continued “you cannot ‘presently’ change yesterday or tomorrow, so it is of supreme importance that you dedicate all of your efforts to ‘right now’. It is the only time that matters. It is the only time there is.”
We only have the present moment in which to live, and we only have the present moment in which to choose. But this does not limit us, rather it gives us the clarity and the focus to really make a difference in our lives. As the Mishnah tells us to live each day as if it may be our last, we have to think each day about our purpose and our actions.