The moment’s edge

Put on a piece of music you enjoy. Now try something unusual: focus only on the sound you're hearing in this exact instant. Not the melody, not the rhythm - just this single moment of sound. Notice how your mind automatically creates patterns, connecting what just happened with what might come next. Even in a fraction of a second, we're building time.

This constant construction happens in everything we experience. Take any simple action - reaching for a cup, taking a step, even blinking. We're always slightly ahead of ourselves, anticipating the next instant, or slightly behind, holding onto what just happened. The present moment seems to constantly slip away.

Your morning coffee becomes a familiar ritual built from memory. A conversation becomes a story unfolding in time. Even reading these words, you're connecting letters into words, words into meanings, creating a continuous flow of understanding. All this happens so naturally we rarely notice it.

But what's here before this automatic construction? Before the mind strings moments together into melodies, actions, and experiences? Something is already complete in each instant, before we make it part of a sequence.

Stay with that music for a moment longer. Let go of following the melody. Don't try to remember what you just heard or anticipate what's coming. Just this sound, right now. Notice how the experience opens up when you stop connecting it to anything else.

This isn't about trying to live in some imagined "now" or attempting to stop thoughts about past and future. It's about recognizing what's already here before time gets constructed. Before memory and anticipation create their familiar story.

That completeness is always here, in every experience. Not as some special state of presence, but as the simple reality that precedes our mental joining of moments. When we stop trying to hold time together, something timeless reveals itself.