What Time Is It?

It's a truism, I know, but it bugs me, and I wish I had the philosophical ability to work out its implications. It's this: whenever a person is alive, he or she is alive in the present, never the past nor the future. One implication, I suppose, is: if a person continues to be alive in a self-conscious state after physical death, this means that he is alive in the present---certainly at least his present and, it would seem, the same present as not only all the dead but also all the living on Earth. In this sense, therefore, only the present---not the past nor the future---exists for self-conscious creatures. I wish my wristwatch had Arabic, and not Roman, numerals.

-Old Doc