Abstract

This short paper examines the nature of time, arguing that it is not an independent dimension or a container within which events occur but an arising from engagement with persistence. Time does not impose itself onto reality, nor does it exist apart from the entities that experience it. What is commonly understood as past, present, and future are not fundamental properties of events but distinctions introduced through structured interaction with duration. Reality does not segment itself into discrete states of before, now, and after—such divisions arise only in relation to how entities engage with continuity. An event, such as a person’s death, is not intrinsically future before it happens, present as it unfolds, or past after it occurs. Rather, these labels are imposed to structure interaction with an ongoing process. The confusion arises when time is treated as an external feature of reality, rather than as an ordering that emerges from engagement with persistence. This analysis clarifies that clocks and calendars do not measure time itself but are tools created to track and coordinate engagement with duration. The idea that time can dilate, contract, or slow is a misinterpretation of what is being observed—what changes are the instruments that structure reference points, not time as a substance or medium. By distinguishing between reality as continuous presence and becoming and duration as the persistence of entities, this work removes inherited misconceptions about time. Time is neither an illusion nor a cosmic river flowing independently; it is the structured arising of interaction with what endures. Through this understanding, the contradictions surrounding time’s existence dissolve, revealing its nature as neither an absolute framework nor a subjective imposition, but a structured manifestation arising from the interaction with persistence.