Life Only Lasts an Instant

"While reading James Zimring's book What Science Is and How It Really Works recently, I discovered this sentence: "We can only experience an instant; we don't experience an entire minute simultaneously." So, I guess the title for this article should have been "The Experience of Life Only Lasts an Instant," but, if I'm honest, I wanted to create a sense of the dramatic. And to be pedantic, I also think "life" and the "experience of life" are the same thing. The same thing from a first-person perspective, at least."

"Despite what might be seen as quibbling over the odd word or two, I was captured by the suggestion that an experience only lasts an instant and that we can't experience an entire minute simultaneously. Zimring seems to be saying that experience lasts less than a minute. Well then, how long exactly is an instant? And what precisely is "experience?""

Experience exists only in the present instant and cannot be lived all at once over longer spans like minutes. Memory and imagination provide access to past and future but do not alter current sensation. The subjective duration of an instant varies with context and attention, making some moments feel fleeting and others extended. Only present experiences can be modified, so aligning immediate perception with desire produces contentment. Achieving a desired life experience requires attending to and shaping each present instant, which poses practical and philosophical challenges for planning, ambition, and satisfaction.

Read at Psychology Today