Sumber ilustrasi: Magnific
17 Mei 2026 13.56 WIB – Akar
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Desanomia [17.05.2026] What is the movement of time? This question is raised through several assumptions. First, that this issue is actually part of what concerns us in everyday life. Many questions revolve around it, especially when explaining why something happened instead of something else. Second, that time is understood as a physical quantity, as it is conceived within the framework of physics, while also being experienced the way most of us feel that we “experience time.” In essence, time is generally assumed to be understood already, so no special explanation about it seems necessary.
What is being discussed here is the movement of time in relation to the following statement: the future of a chicken egg is not always a chick, but the past of a chick is certainly a chicken egg. How should this statement be understood? What becomes visible through it, and what remains hidden?
First of all, the statement must be examined as plainly as possible so that it is understood according to what it actually means.
First, can it be accepted that the future of a chicken egg is not always a chick? On this point, opinions may divide. Some may disagree and say that the future of a chicken egg must be a chick. This disagreement is based on the assumption that a chicken egg is supposed to hatch into a chick.
Others, however, would say that the statement is true, and that this is precisely how reality unfolds. From a chicken egg, several possibilities may emerge: 1. A chick. 2. A rotten egg. 3. An omelet or another processed egg dish. 4. An egg as a commodity in the food market. These four are only a few among many other possible futures of the egg.
In this sense, if we follow the explanation above, it can be said that a single chicken egg contains multiple possible forms in the future, and not all of them are chicks.
Second, can it be accepted that the past of a chick is a chicken egg? Of course this is very clear. A chick comes from the process in which a chicken egg is incubated, either by the hen itself or by artificial hatching technology. In other words, there is no room whatsoever to deny that a chick indeed comes from a chicken egg.
Based on these two situations, we can observe an important difference between moving toward the future and reading backward into the past. Moving forward, a single condition always contains many possibilities. A chicken egg may become a chick, may rot, may be eaten, may fail to hatch, may become part of the food industry, or may even be frozen. The future is therefore open. From the same starting point, different outcomes remain possible.
In contrast, once we look backward from an outcome that has already occurred, the path becomes much narrower. An existing chick points back to a specific origin: a chicken egg. The past appears certain because the final result has already been formed. Once an event has taken place, people tend to read the entire chain leading up to it as though it had always been destined to produce that outcome. Yet while the process was still unfolding, the result was never guaranteed.
Here emerges the difference between possibility and retrospection. The future moves within a field of probabilities, whereas the past is read within a field of certainty. Once the chick exists, the relationship to the egg appears linear and obvious. But before hatching, the egg existed in an uncertain situation. In this sense, the certainty of the past is often an effect produced by the outcome that eventually emerged, rather than an original property of the process itself.
This matters because people are often deceived by outcomes that have already succeeded. Once something has happened successfully, narratives are constructed as though the entire process leading to it had been inevitable from the beginning. History then appears orderly and logical. In reality, however, history is filled with branches of possibility that failed, were delayed, deviated, or stopped halfway.
For that reason, the statement can also be read as a critique of how causality is understood. Looking backward from the future into the past, relationships appear deterministic. Looking forward from the present into the future, relationships remain open. The chick makes the egg appear to have been a certain cause, but the egg itself never guaranteed the chick.
Behind this lies a deeper reflection on time itself. The future is not a space of certainty, but a space of formation. Meanwhile, the past is not simply what “already exists,” but the result of a selection among countless possibilities that never became reality. What appears certain in history is often only the possibility that managed to survive.
What do you think? (njd)
Note: This article was made as part of a dedicated effort to bring everyday life around us to our minds.
