The idea of Now

The concept of now represents the inevitability of transience - the relationship between space and time - a kind of fleeting sense of reality. The space-time reference point of now suggests both spatial and temporal uncertainty as well as subjective experience. That is, the concept is not absolute but is relative to the observer's frame of experience. Yet defining the true nature of now takes on elusive yet provocative and fruitful associations. It has crossed cultures and civilisations, people and places, and countless interpretations have been proposed, as exemplified by Buddhist impermanence, the ‘feeling of things’ of Japanese aesthetics or Picasso's verdict that 'If a work of art does not live in the present it does not live'. The transitory essence of now suggests that ideation is an agent for continuous change where the idea is in the present time or moment yet related to the past pointing to the future. This also suggests that the ideation process can be viewed through a philosophical lens, say, of the ontology of being and becoming, or Hegel's view that everything is in a process of change. And Heraclitus noted the endless flux of existence: 'It is not possible to step twice into the same river.'