Cause becomes effect.

The problem is that as mobile organisms, our perception is sequential, in order to navigate, so we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future, rather than change turning future to past. Like we still see the sun as moving east to west, rather than the earth turning west to east.

Energy is conserved, because it is the present. As such, it goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the waves, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

Though as these organisms, it's our digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the central nervous system sorts the information. So we try to describe and explain reality in terms of the patterns generated, rather than the processes generating them.

We put the cart before the horse.

Epicycles were brilliant math, as a description of our view of the cosmos, but the crysalline spheres were lousy physics, as explanation.

Spacetime is a similar extrapolation.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past.