We Do Not Perceive Time Itself—Only a World in Motion

On February 15, 2026, I wrote a single line in flomo, translated here from Chinese:

We never perceive time itself—only things in motion and the world changing around us.

A week later, I went further. I wrote that sunrise and sunset, today and tomorrow, were concepts people had created; perhaps everything was simply matter in motion and time did not exist.

I still like the first line. It preserves the intuition I had that day: I cannot see time. I see the light fade, a person grow older, a familiar shop close, or a city that once felt impossibly far away become ordinary. But the second claim should not be presented as a conclusion from physics. Modern science does not settle a question like that in a single sentence.

The short answer is this: physics can measure the interval between two events with extraordinary precision. Whether time exists independently of change, and whether it truly “passes,” are also open philosophical questions. What follows is my way of thinking through time by looking at change, memory, and writing—not a law of nature.

We usually recognize time through change

When I am not watching a clock, I rarely notice a particular minute passing. I notice light moving across a room, warm water growing cold, leaves changing color, or a familiar voice carrying a little more fatigue.

I grew up in a village with one small shop selling wontons, soy milk, and egg pancakes. Eating there felt almost fashionable. Getting into the city took effort: I could ride an electric bike for three or four kilometers to catch a bus, or wait by the roadside for a privately run coach. It cost ten yuan and went to a market in Weifang. A single trip could make me happy for days.

On February 23, 2026, I wrote about the same route again while riding a bus:

Now I am sitting on a bus, moving slowly from the village toward the city. I look at the city that once seemed enormous and suddenly think: perhaps it is not so large after all.

The city did not shrink that afternoon. The journey felt shorter, my world had grown wider, and I was no longer the child looking at it. The city still had the same name, but my younger self and I saw two different worlds.

It is through these differences that I notice time at all. That breakfast no longer felt rare. The journey no longer felt far. A familiar voice had changed. Those were the signs that something had passed.

How I came to reconsider that line

After reading more, I realized that “we never perceive time itself” works better as a feeling than as a conclusion.

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology uses careful language in its explanation of how a second is measured: our most precise measurements concern time intervals, the duration between two events. Relativity complicates the idea that everyone shares the same “now,” as Einstein Online explains, but it does not prove that time is an illusion. Philosophers still disagree about whether time exists independently or only as a relationship between events; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on time surveys those positions.

None of these sources answered whether time exists. They reminded me that the sentence I wrote can remain a question, but should not be presented as one that science has already settled.

Why can the same hour feel long or short?

There is another kind of time—not on the clock, but in experience.

When I am waiting for an answer, I cannot stop watching those few minutes. When I am absorbed in something, an afternoon can pass quickly. Years later, an entire period of life may be reduced to a few scenes. Human experience clearly does not move at the even pace of a clock.

This is one reason writing matters to me. Memory compresses and rearranges. Things I learn later can change the story I tell about what happened before. A note written at the time is not perfectly objective, but it preserves a position that cannot be reconstructed in quite the same way: what I noticed, which words I chose, and what I did not yet know.

A record does not preserve time

Writing cannot keep an afternoon from ending. Water cools, the bus reaches its stop, and people continue on their way.

What a record can preserve is the language, attention, and point of view of that moment. When I read it years later, I can see what I noticed then and what mattered to me.

Ordinary life is worth recording not because every day hides a profound lesson. Often, the first things to disappear are precisely the details that once seemed too unimportant to mention: a route walked every day, a meal that often appeared at home, the way a parent spoke at that age, or a shop that had not yet closed.

If you do not know where to begin, answer only one of these questions:

1. Which ordinary parts of today might no longer exist in a few years?

2. What sound, light, route, or habit would a photograph fail to explain?

3. What am I currently taking for granted?

4. If my future self reads this, what version of me do I hope they recognize?

For more concrete starting points, see 24 Journal Prompts. If you already know that you are speaking to your future self, you can turn the moment into a future-self letter.

Not every record needs to become a letter

A new thought can remain in a quick-capture tool. An action belongs in a task list. A passage that still needs revision may be better in an ordinary document.

I think about writing a letter only when I know who I want to speak to—my past self, my future self, or another person. That is where Inks fits in my own workflow. It is not where every record is meant to end up.

I still do not know whether time truly “flows.” I only know that today will pass too. When I look back, I may want to remember what I saw and what mattered to me. Writing cannot make today stay, but it can leave part of the answer.

7 min read · 2026-08-25 · 2026-08-25

By Wenpeng Wang, Developer of Inks.

Statements about time measurement, relativity, and philosophical positions were checked against NIST, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Einstein Online on August 25, 2026.