Most of us grow up believing that the world runs in a simple order. First something happens, then something else follows. You push a glass off a table, and only after it falls does it shatter. You decide to speak, and only then do words leave your mouth. Cause comes first, effect comes later. This way of thinking feels so obvious that it hardly seems worth questioning. And yet, when philosophers and physicists examine the structure of time more closely, this familiar order begins to feel less like a rule written into the universe and more like a habit shaped by how we experience the world. So the question is simple, but surprisingly deep. Do causes always come before effects, or is that just how time appears from where we stand? Why Cause and Effect Feel So Obvious In everyday life, causation feels inseparable from time. We remember the past but not the future. We make choices in the present in hopes of shaping what comes next. Our entire sense of responsibility, planning, and mean...