Tick Tock Tick Tock

According to Merriam-Webster, time is a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future. 

With this definition in mind, I'm going to question the depiction of time in Siddhartha.

Throughout his journey of searching for nirvana, or enlightenment/inner peace, Siddhartha was only thinking and acting with egocentrism. He continuously expressed that others around him - ordinary, somewhat problematic people - were "childlike." He viewed them as inferior, preventing him from regarding them as a whole - the key information of time. 

Like the definition of time, Siddhartha viewed everything in fragments of a whole - there were fragments to everything. However, he eventually learned that time, in fact, doesn't exist. It's an illusion, an obstacle that prevents an individual from reaching their lifelong goal, which in this case, is enlightenment. 

If this is true, why do we have memories? Why do we constantly wait for the future? Isn't that the reason why time exists and is sectioned into past, present, and future? I understand that obsessing over the conception of time is distracting from seeking a goal, but it's the fact that relying on time/the future is the reason one would go searching in the first place. Although Siddhartha discovered inner peace after letting go and viewing the world with a wider lens, he knew he was going to reach enlightenment - that's why he went to Vasudeva and spent time with the river. 

Overall, time is never properly tangible in any way because it is unpredictable. The future is unknown and will always remain unknown. But for now, we should never give up and raise doubts over any fear of the unknown, and spend time making the present valuable. 

Like Gandalf said to Frodo, 

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us"