simhanada:

..The future is virtually absent because events which lie in it have not taken place, they have not been realized and cannot therefore constitute time. If however, future events are certain to occur, or if they fall within the inevitable rhythm of nature, they at best constitute only potential time, not actual time. What is taking place now no doubt unfolds the future, but once an event has taken place it is no longer in the future but in the present and the past. Actual time is therefore what is present and what is past. It moves backward rather than forward; and people set their minds not on future things, but chiefly in what has taken place ….Time has to be experienced in order to make sense or become real.

– John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 1969