For Aristotle, the spatial (ie movement) conceptualization of time is paramount:
“We apprehend time only when we have marked motion, marking it by before and after”
Next, to preserve the sanctity of time (ie Time is sacrosanct from the variabilities of past/future/history), Aristotle labeled time by calling it ‘number’:
“Time is not motion, but number of motion”

We now have the relation of Movement (kinesis) to Time (kronos) through Number (arithmos). And with this, Aristotle has neatly allowed for time to be at once continuous and divisible – with Number as the dividing continuity that counts and measures motion (the movement of before and after).
And the reference ‘unit’ of Aristotle’s Time is the Now (nun):
“time is both made continuous… and divided” by the now.

From all the above then, Aristotle’s Now-points in Time, neatly labeled by Number (ie continuously multiplicable and divisible), gives continuity to the Movement of before and after, and also limits the before and after – successive now-points then give rise to the linear representation of points in relation to a line.

And as for extending the concept of a line into a circle, this final step as a full consummation of the spatial conceptualization, was undertaken by Derrida as mentioned previously.

[The Now can be considered as a kind of boundary, which leads to Aristotle's idea of Place:
"the boundary of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained body"
In a way, it can be thought of as a special kind of 'place-holder' with special limit/boundary properties (a super bin?)

For me, the most interesting aspect of Aristotle's time is the boundary conditions from the perspective of his Potentiality and Actuality. It seems to be almost a kind of probability density function.]

What you said: “but rather a point infinitely small (or infinitely large)”, reminds me of a sci-fi short story about a crew member of a spaceship who started to expand in ‘size’, growing larger and beyond his ship and eventually filling up the entire universe, at which point he went bang and shrank to an infinitesimally small point.

On a cautionary note ld, while “trying to consider the smallest unit of time to be a single life”, one has to be careful not to slip in between the tiny cracks and end up here…

(And perhaps for those with an interest in time-altering chemical compounds, like ‘thiotimoline’: please note this.)

[I regret my verbiage…

I can just imagine that great and acerbic Witt, brandishing his red-hot poker popper-ingly, and saying:
Come on, that of which you cannot speak, leave to silence.

And strangely, these other sagacious words pop to mind:
“Oh no, I’ve said too much
(I haven’t said enough)”
-R.E.M.

Yes, that so many human constructs ‘exist’ only by recurvsive referencing (like many house-of-cards) is intriguing.
But this is perhaps telling of the fact of just how limited/localized human consciousness is; and an undeniable but silent pointer to the unimaginable Other…

But still we plod on.

… …

Apologies for picking up this thread again, but the circular injection has turned it in an interesting direction (or in truth, no -unitary- direction at all?).

Aristotle in his conceptualization of Time, reasonably compared time to space and therefore, eluted the classical linear representation of time as a straight line progressing to infinity.
However, for Aristotle, Time as a continuous series of similar discrete points extending in regularity ad nauseam, is problematic. Considering time as points on a line introduces a boundary (of-the-now) problem, ie an unavoidable pause – a gap in time(line).

To resolve this, Aristotle turned to the very interesting ideas of Potentiality and Actuality. If one treats the point as potentiality and the line as actuality, the now as a point is never really here – it is always waiting for actuality, for presence.
And taking the spatial consideration of Time a step further, a point (in Time) becomes a line becoming a circle. The line as actuality, as presence, is a tracing that erases its own traces – it can only keep going in circles. [paraphrasing Derrida]

Whether it be applied to time, space or any other construct, the concept of self-referencing circularity has captured Man’s imagination through the ages across diverse cultures and disciplines:

[Ouroboros/greek, serpent/indian, dragon/chinese]

But perhaps the most eloquent and dramatic portrayal of Time belongs rightly, to the Bard:

“Enter Time, the Chorus:

I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass
The same I am, ere ancient’st order was
Or what is now received: I witness to
The times that brought them in; so shall I do
To the freshest things now reigning and make stale
The glistering of this present, as my tale
Now seems to it.
…
If ever you have spent time worse ere now;
If never, yet that Time himself doth say
He wishes earnestly you never may.”

-Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.

Don – The weight of the world is a concept very familiar to me yet I struggle daily to carry my own cross.

Jeff

In the course of Life, you are right that time seems to undergo mysterious compressions and dilations at various junctures, both good and the not so good. We all have to take our lumps, and pass through those too long moments when time, far from being light and ephemeral, seems as heavy and burdensome as the weight of the world.

That you are now watching your child grow through patience-tinted lenses, is a wonderful and blessed thing indeed.

The concept of “eternal now” is precisely how I try to live my life but again was hoping to bring forward the perspective of now being the lifetime rather than the popular (second, hour, or day).

The perception of time depending on the mind is fascinating to watch in my son’s development. Here I don’t mean something like time perception in relation to pulse rate (insufficient correlation) but rather what is described by patience.

While we cannot know everything empirically (especially when it comes to understanding the Creator), we can nonetheless observe quite a bit in other lifetimes when it comes to time. I would hope that the individuals in charge (called governments collectively) would consider their consequences in greater time scales than what seems to happen recently.

Einstein defined Time as an interval between two sequential events in space, observed by an observer who does not change with time – two simultaneous events define space and two sequential events define time. At the heart of his thoughts on temporality, lies the concept of simultaneity relative to a frame of reference.

And yet a long ‘time’ before Einstein and even way before Newton, Plotinus was speaking of how in the interior contemplation of our thinking, the subjective time in which it is articulated is more ‘real’ than the exterior world of physical bodies acted upon by a linear, chronological time – his ‘eternal now’.
(Consider time seemingly suspended in a thought, a reflexive action, in dreaming; as in your thoughts of stimulus/response and time lag…)

In Husserlian phenomenology, the bracketing (like your bins) of the transcendental consciousness of outer/inner events is the very origin of temporality/time. Husserl describes it as a flux, and characterizes time as being both streaming(linear) and standing(eternal).

This leads naturally to Heidegger’s ‘Augenblick’ or ‘blinking of the eye’, which has been described as: “a decisive moment in time that is both fleeting yet momentously eventful, even epoch-makingly significant.”

Of course, an examination of the German ‘Augenblick’ (and its predecessor, Kierkegaard’s ‘Øieblik’ or ‘moment’) cannot be complete without including the Indian Vedic concept of ‘ksana’/moment:
Vedanta defines time more subjectively, where the subject cannot be divorced from the perception of time itself. By bringing the experiencer and the mind associated with it to observe and record the experience, time is reduced to a concept in the mind. Hence the perception of time depends on the mind.

At this point, perhaps we may move beyond the mind… and return to Plotinus, where he says that Time is to be found in the activity of the Soul, but that the Soul itself is eternal. Being in Time is to be distinguished from Being in Eternity. Time is a changing reality, while eternity is an unchanging reality.

Here, your musings above on a house (as symbol) and its lingering memories and intentions are very provocative.
Derrida, in dealing with this, questioned both the German ‘Augenblick’ and Indian ‘ksana’, as to whether they refer to an indivisible unit/moment (and we both know Gandhi’s thoughts on this ) or whether they include both the “presence of the present and the absence of the absent”.
Derrida maintains that there is no pure present moment, and all that we find is absence and the “mere trace (lingering) of the vanishing moment” – his “Différance”.

Indeed, “1 There is a time for everything…”; consequently, might there not be ‘not-a-time’ for ‘no-thing’? That is, God’s omniscient eternal now…?

Alas, we cannot know this empirically. And what we do know of man capturing their ‘moment in time’ with God (essentially ‘testaments’ from scripture), seems to be describing their attempts to grasp at the lingering trace of God’s presence/absence:
-Abraham, not seeing His face, but only His vanishing back;
-Jacob, struggling and clinging vainly onto God for a blessing;
-Moses, blessed indeed with a glowing transfiguration, but which eventually has to fade away into a very human rage…