It might be useful to first consider our own physiology.

As mobile organisms, this sentient interface between body and world necessarily organizes as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate.

Which is how we perceive time and why it is so important to our experience.

The reality though, isn't so much the present moving past to future, but change turning future to past.

Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Time is asymmetric, because it is a measure of action and action is internal. The earth only turns one direction. Entropy is not being directly measured and is a second order effect.

Different clocks will run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

Society entails getting everyone following the same rules, using the same measures, so it might seem like there should be some universal flow of time, but everything moves and interacts at varying rates. Harmonization, rather than synchronization.

Energy is conserved, because it is present. It creates time. As well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure and they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as time is to our thought process.

As present and process, energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

In a factory, the product goes start to finish, future to past, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Toward the future.

As lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information. Signals from the noise.

Entropy is both the energy radiating away, as form settles back into equilibrium.