In relational ontology, duration is never neutral. It is not simply “time passing”; it is the lived extension of attention, care, and relational presence. To inhabit a moment fully, to sustain attention, to endure waiting, is to actualise ethical responsibility within the very fabric of temporality.
Liora lingers at the threshold of a path. The horizon is open, yet each step demands patience. The journey is not only spatial but temporal, relational, and ethical. Duration is the measure of what we owe to the moment, to others, and to the potentialities we encounter.
Waiting, Endurance, and the Labour of Presence
Duration is ethical because it is labour. To wait, to endure, to inhabit silence — these are not idle acts. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot transforms waiting into relational practice: the pauses, the delays, the repetitions demand engagement, attentiveness, and responsiveness. Cage’s extended silences, sustained notes, and iterative structures are temporal labours that foreground what it takes to inhabit sound and absence simultaneously.
Duration shapes relational cuts: the longer attention is sustained, the more subtle shifts in meaning can emerge. Liora’s journey reminds us that what seems uneventful, or even empty, carries weight precisely because presence is maintained against the pull of distraction, impatience, or expectation. Ethical temporality requires endurance.
Attention as Responsibility
Duration exposes attention as a moral practice. To read slowly, to listen deeply, to pause before acting — all are acts of relational care. The temporal frame of relational ontology transforms attention from passive observation into active responsibility. One does not simply “experience” time; one responds to it, negotiates with it, and inhabits its constraints.
The ethical demand of duration is twofold:
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To acknowledge limits — of self, others, and circumstance.
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To inhabit those limits fully, allowing relational meaning to unfold.
Silence, Stillness, and Relational Meaning
In sustained duration, silence is not absence; it is presence charged with potential. Cage’s 4’33”, Beckett’s pauses, even the quiet moments of daily life — these are temporal spaces where relational actualisation occurs. To stay with silence, to hold stillness without succumbing to impatience or distraction, is to enact relational ethics in real time. Duration is the crucible in which attention, care, and meaning converge.
Liora’s horizon beckons endlessly, yet the path is defined not by its destination but by the time taken to traverse it. Duration gives depth, density, and texture to relational cuts. It is in these temporal stretches that relational meaning is forged, sustained, and revealed.
From Duration to Event
Duration frames the emergence of events. Sustained attention allows relational shifts to be noticed, cultivated, and acted upon. Without duration, rhythm collapses into mere pulse; constraint into mere limit. Ethical and semiotic potential resides in the temporally extended, in the patience to stay with what is unfolding.
Episode 3 extends the series’ arc: first we saw constraint, then rhythm, now duration as ethical demand. Each layer deepens our understanding of relational time: limitation shapes possibility, patterning structures emergence, and sustained engagement ensures that relational meaning is actualised.
The next episode, Event as Reconfiguration, will complete the arc, showing how relational cuts crystallise into moments of emergence, even when nothing “happens” in conventional terms. Duration prepares the ground for eventfulness: ethical patience becomes the medium through which the relational world manifests itself.
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