Haley,

Time is a tapestry being woven of strands pulled out of what had already been woven.

We like reductionism, to some objective “truth.” Part of the problem is that we look in the patterns, rather then the processes producing them.

Back to time; Consider that what manifests this reality is the energy bouncing around. As such it goes from past to future events/configurations, while the events coalesce and dissolve, going future to past. Processes churn along, while patterns rise and fall.

Think of a factory; The product goes start ot finish, being in the future to being in the past. While the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

Individual lives go birth to death, being in the future to being in the past, while the species goes onto new generations, shedding old. Our consciousness goes from one thought to the next, as these thoughts come and go. Opposite directions of time.

So our consciousness is focused on the patterns, the thoughts and we distill them down to ever more concise forms. Like abbreviating everything and then abbreviating it more. Which what math is, the most stable patterns, distilled to the most concise language.

Yet in nature, when form is condensed, something is shed/radiated away. Think galaxies; As form coalesces in, energy radiates out. The overall effect being a cosmic convection cycle. What collapses into galaxies is balanced by what expands between them. It is just that in order to think, academia needs form. Yet form is reductionist, so energy can only be expressed as quanta.

Think a wave; It doesn’t really have form, until it crests. If you sampled the energy before it crested, it would lose energy and not express the amplitude it might have.

Or a moving car. The uncertainty principle applies. Either you can have its exact location, or its momentum. If you freeze the location, you can’t measure the momentum, but if you measure momentum, the location is necessarily smeared along the road.

Then consider emotions and thought. Those impulses swirling around under the surface are like waves that haven’t crested yet and achieved some distinct form of thought. We associate emotion and instinct with the heart and gut, as they are the source of the energy driving us on. The process.

So that we obsess over the patterns generated is why reality seems like a passing illusion. Once we seem to have grasped it, it’s gone, like the wave cresting.