We are all familiar with the concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’. We probably use the terms all the time in daily conversation and correspondence. But exactly where do we find ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’? What exactly is ‘yesterday’ or for that matter ‘tomorrow’? When exactly is ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’? We use the terms loosely, but pinning them down is elusive.
Actually, to start the ball rolling, the concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ are totally artificial since your today is already someone else’s tomorrow, or someone else’s yesterday, depending on the relative time zones you and that someone else inhabit. Rather, there is a universal ‘now’ (even if it’s noon in one place and midnight 180 global degrees opposite), and at that point defined as ‘now’ there’s what’s past ‘now’ (history) and what’s still ahead of ‘now’ (the future). However, since we are all familiar and comfortable with the terms ‘yesterday’ (history), ‘today’ (now) and ‘tomorrow’ (future), let’s stick with that though they are unnatural time units since they are artificial distinctions or inventions by humans. Other unnatural, artificial, meaningless, manmade time divisions include the second, minute, hour, week, month, decade, century, and related. But there are some natural time divisions: the ever varying day-night cycle and the broad yearly cycle of the seasons are reflected in the natural world, from annual tree rings to the awake-asleep patterns of wildlife. The Lunar cycle is another natural time unit that influences life on Earth but one that has no corresponding manmade equivalent.
Anyway, even though an artificial concept, where does ‘yesterday’ reside? Where are all our yesterdays? Where does ‘tomorrow’ reside? Where are all our tomorrows?
Let’s consider ‘yesterday’ first, but perhaps one needs to start off by distinguishing between a personal ‘yesterday’ and a generic or universal ‘yesterday’, a ‘yesterday’ that contained all things that happened ‘yesterday’ throughout the entire universe.
When it comes to ‘yesterday’, and the day before ‘yesterday’ and the day before that, etc. you could say ‘all our yesterdays’ resides in what someone tells us happened, or what’s recorded in a book or newspaper, or what’s on tape as in a radio show or TV news bulletin. Yet, if you hear that person, read that article, see that TV program that details all things ‘yesterday’, you are hearing, reading, seeing that ‘yesterday’, today, so you are experiencing ‘yesterday’ today. That’s not what we really mean by ‘yesterday’.
What happened ‘yesterday’, even if you find out something about ‘yesterday’ today, ultimately resides in your mind and in your memory. That’s what makes ‘yesterday’ really real to you. But ‘yesterday’ is even more real if you directly experienced ‘yesterday’s’ happenings ‘yesterday’. Your ‘yesterday’ is your past; your past is contained in your memory.
But where does ‘yesterday’ reside after the oldest person alive who can remember or recall a ‘yesterday’ beyond the recall of any other living person, dies? Then records that detail all our ‘yesterdays’, say an historical museum exhibit, are only experienced afresh today. There’s no way you can deal with a ‘yesterday’ in ancient Egypt
A universal ‘yesterday’ suggests that not everything that belongs to ‘yesterday’ is known to other people or is written down or otherwise observed or recorded. In fact most of what happened ‘yesterday’ is in total oblivion to all and sundry.
What if there was absolutely nothing to preserve for posterity an event that happened ‘yesterday’, say a raindrop impacting the middle of the ocean and there’s not even a fish around to see it splash. Or perhaps a meteor impacted the far side of the Moon or several hydrogen atoms fused to create a helium atom in the core of our Sun releasing a photon which has to ‘fight’ it’s way to the surface and escape, but that takes thousands of years, or if inside a faraway star in a faraway galaxy that photon wouldn’t be visible to us (or our descendents) on Planet Earth for maybe millions of years, if ever (since 99.999% of such photons will bypass Earth). Unless there is a cosmic consciousness, that photon will go unobserved and unrecorded, in which case, did the event happen? Does the photon exist? In fact, ‘yesterday’, 99.999% (add at least 100 more 9’s) of events that transpired in the greater Universe went unrecorded and unobserved. So the historical record of ‘yesterday’ is grossly incomplete, unless again you wish to argue that unobserved, even by the humblest of microbes, means it didn’t happen. It’s a variation on the old ‘if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nothing or no one there to observe it, did it make a sound’?
In any event, perhaps this photon event is an example of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ merging – a ‘yesterday-tomorrow’ connection. A photon created ‘yesterday’ (sometime in the past) but not observed until ‘tomorrow’ (sometime in the future) is still just a single timeline event. In fact, ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ are always linked because what happened ‘yesterday’ has a direct causality bearing on what will happen ‘tomorrow’. So in one sense ‘yesterday’ resides in ‘tomorrow’, and ‘tomorrow’ will in turn reside in tomorrow’s ‘tomorrow’. On a human level, a dance between the sheets ‘yesterday’ can result in quite another event nine months worth of tomorrows later!
Where does ‘tomorrow’ (the future) reside? Well, as hinted at above, the future resides in what happened ‘yesterday’. That’s the generic or universal future. What of your personal future? Where does that reside? There’s only one place your personal future resides – inside your mind.
You can imagine the Sun rising ‘tomorrow’, but until it actually does happen that event is all in your mind, but of course when it does happen it’s no longer ‘tomorrow’ is it? ‘Tomorrow’ never actually comes around, just morphs into today. But sooner or later all your personal mental ‘tomorrows’ come to an end, at least that’s the accepted wisdom.
Your future ceases when you’re declared brain dead, or does it? Not entirely, for each and every elementary particle (electrons, etc.) that makes up what was you in your past still has a future – another case of the ‘yesterday and tomorrow’ connection – as those bits and pieces have had as many ‘yesterdays’ as there were ‘yesterdays’ and will have as many ‘tomorrows’ as the Universe allows for. Some of those bits and pieces were no doubt once part of a ‘yesterday’ pre-you life (or even non-life) form and will no doubt become a part of a post-you ‘tomorrow’s’ life form (or non-life form), so you were part of someone or something else’s immortality and you in turn will be immortal as bits of you will become incorporated into other pieces of matter and energy, ‘tomorrow’.
In summary, your personal ‘yesterday’ is just a memory, housed and locked away in your mind. Your personal ‘tomorrows’ are just patterns of thought and probabilities, possibilities, even near certainties, but only near certainties as nothing is ever set absolutely in concrete (death and taxes excepted). What may, or may not have happened unobserved in your non-personally experienced ‘yesterday’ resides in your imagination. What may or may not happen unobserved outside of your personal world ‘tomorrow’ is also within your imagination. So where does your ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ reside – in your mind and nowhere else.
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