“Time doesn’t pass. We do.”
We live inside a metaphor. Every day, we speak of time as though it flows past us, drags us forward, slips away, or piles up behind us. We’re “racing against time,” “marking time,” “running out of time,” or “living in the moment.” These metaphors are so familiar that they seem like facts.
But what if they’re not?
What if time — as we commonly imagine it — is not a medium, not a force, not a backdrop, and not even a thing?
Drawing on relational ontology, we can begin to deconstruct these construals and replace them with a view of time as the dimension of unfolding processes, not an independent reality. Time is not what passes. It is what unfolds. And it is always relative to the relational configurations that make it meaningful.
Let’s unpack this, step by step.
1. The Myth of Time’s Flow
Metaphor: Time is a river.
We say that time flows, moves, or flies. But what exactly is supposed to be moving? Is time flowing, or are we?
The metaphor of time as a river encourages us to think of events as objects caught in a stream — carried from the future, through the present, and into the past. But this treats time as an external medium, existing independently of anything that happens. The stream flows, regardless of its contents.
Relational Ontology reframes this. Time is not a container for change. It is the dimension of change itself — the dimension of unfolding. There is no flow apart from process. If nothing happens, time does not exist.
Time does not flow — only processes unfold.
In this sense, time is not something we’re “in.” It’s not a path we walk or a river we ride. It is the relation between successive instances — a way of construing how one state gives rise to another.
2. Past, Present, and Future Are Not Places
Metaphor: Time is a landscape or timeline.
We often think of time as if it were laid out before us — a path we traverse. We imagine “the past” as behind us, “the present” as a knife-edge of now, and “the future” as what lies ahead.
But these spatial metaphors trick us into believing that time is a structure, independent of experience, in which we are placed like coordinates.
From a relational view:
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The past is not a region of spacetime. It is a construal of what has already unfolded — a record of instantiated relations.
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The future is not a destination. It is a field of potential — a structured possibility for further unfolding.
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The present is not a universal now-point. It is a perspective: the locus of current construal — the intersection of ongoing process and semiotic attention.
Past and future do not exist. They are construed from the perspective of now — which itself is an unfolding.
Thus, time is perspectival. It is not laid out; it is enacted.
3. Consciousness and Time: Entangled Unfolding
Metaphor: The self moves through time.
We often imagine consciousness as a passenger in time — experiencing moments as they pass, like slides in a projector. But this assumes that time exists independently of awareness, and that consciousness merely observes it.
Relational ontology inverts this:
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Consciousness does not exist in time.
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Time arises through conscious construal of unfolding processes.
Without change, there is no time. Without conscious construal of change, there is no experience of time. This doesn’t mean time is “in our heads,” but that what we call time is the relational dimension of process — not a substance or a container.
Consciousness is what brings relational unfolding into view — not as a separate observer, but as a participant in the network of processes that constitute what is.
Time is not the backdrop of consciousness. It is the dimension through which consciousness relates unfolding.
4. What Clocks Really Measure
Clocks give the illusion that time is objective and measurable. We imagine that clocks “tell us” how much time has passed, as though they were reading from an external reality.
But clocks don’t measure “time” — they track regular processes we have come to trust as reference patterns. A pendulum swings, a quartz crystal vibrates, a light pulse bounces — and we agree to treat these cycles as the standardised basis of unfolding.
In physics, when we say “time slows down” near a gravitational mass, we often slip into thinking that time itself is slowing. But in relational terms:
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There is no background “time” to compare to.
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One process is unfolding differently relative to another.
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What we call “time dilation” is a change in relation — not a change in an underlying substance.
To say that “time slows” in a gravitational field is to mistake a change in relation for a property of space.
5. Time as Meaningful Unfolding
If we let go of the idea that time is a flow, a container, or a place, what remains?
What remains is unfolding meaning — the semiotic coordination of processes that emerge, persist, change, and give rise to further relations.
In this view:
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Time is not a noun. It is a dimension of process.
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It has no independent existence, only relational unfolding.
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It is not a force that moves us. We are what unfolds — and through that unfolding, time is construed.
A Final Construal: Time as Music
“Music is the most temporal of the arts,” people often say. But perhaps it’s the most honest about time.
Music does not exist all at once. It is patterned unfolding. Its being is its becoming. There is no need to ask, “Where does the music go once it’s played?” or “What medium does it flow through?” These would be meaningless.
Likewise, time need not “flow” or “pass.” It does not go anywhere. It is the name we give to the relational topology of change — the way events co-unfold and construe meaning.
Time is not the medium. Time is the music.
Conclusion
To rethink time is to unhook ourselves from our metaphors. It is to see that what we take for granted — the flow, the container, the absolute now — are construals of reality, not its underlying structure — because in meaning, there is no ‘underlying’, only unfolding.
In the relational ontology:
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Time is the dimension of unfolding.
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There is no external measure apart from relation.
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Past and future are perspectival, not ontological.
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Clocks don’t measure time. They instantiate relation.
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Consciousness does not ride time. It enacts time by participating in unfolding.
Time doesn’t pass. Meaning unfolds.
And so do we.
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