Fui, Sum, Ero - I Was, I Am, I Will Be

Time feels linear only because attention moves.

What appears as past and future is often just memory and anticipation passing through the same awareness. The body changes, names change, roles change, yet something remains uninterrupted, quietly witnessing the movement. Existence does not progress as much as it unfolds. And what unfolds does not leave behind what came before.

If I watch a flame, it seems singular. But it is never the same flame even for a second. It rises, dissolves, reforms endlessly. Still, I call it one. Not because it is static, but because continuity does not require permanence. It requires presence. In this way, time behaves like fire: momentary, ungraspable, yet unmistakably whole.

If each moment is born and dies instantly, why does identity feel continuous and what is it that continues?

Memory tells a story of becoming. Childhood, youth, ambition, loss each claims its own chapter. Yet when observed closely, none of them are finished. The child still responds to wonder. The youth still reaches. The one who lost still listens for echoes. They do not exist behind me. They exist within me.

So is time something I travel through or something I carry?

What I call “I” does not sit in one age. It stretches across them. It is not confined to the body I inhabit today, nor erased by the body I will leave. The self does not advance; it accumulates. Each experience leaves a resonance, not a scar. And these resonances do not compete, they harmonize.

If every version of me is still alive in some way, where exactly is the present located?

i was not smaller when i was younger,

i am not fuller because i am older,

i will not disappear when form dissolves,

what changes is shape,

what remains is knowing,

time rearranges appearances,

but awareness stays unnamed.

To live is often described as moving forward. But forward toward what? Toward completion? Toward resolution? Or simply toward another expression of the same underlying current?

The future does not wait somewhere ahead, it ripples inward. The past does not sit behind, it breathes silently here. And the present is not a moment at all, but a meeting point where everything converges.

If all tenses are available now, what does it truly mean to let go?

There is no need to choose between who I was, who I am, or who I will be. They are not separate identities competing for truth. They are variations of one continuity, seen from different angles. When attention softens, time loosens its grip, and what remains is not chronology, but depth. Not duration, but intimacy with being.

I was.

I am.

I will be.

Not as three states, but as one unbroken seeing.

© 2025 Beyond Silence

A note from the listening silence. Please credit respectfully if shared.