The philosophy of time in the Western tradition, originating in the philosophy of physical time, may seem irrelevant to personal experience. However, in my work, the philosophy of time has been transformative for me: it has altered my understanding of my own (and anyone’s) immediate perception and also my sense of self in time. The first is transformative in a productive and positive way, altering my thinking about perception and temporal experience, including perceptual and temporal illusion. It also impacts my understanding of empirical evidence, simultaneity, and free will. I once thought the transformation could be even more profound. Given the philosophy of time I subscribe to, the passage of time, that sense of inevitable events moving toward us now, is strictly speaking an illusion. This might show that the past and the future are merely illusions, and thus that one’s death (always in one’s future, and so dependent on it) is an illusion too; as an underworld shown to not exist also shows the nonexistence of its inhabiting shades, so the nonexistent future takes death along with it. However, this reasoning is a mistake. It is based on a confusion about what it means to change given modern philosophy of time, and what it involves. And it is good it is a mistake. For everything I plan and find worth doing is in the future, packed between this moment and my death. Denying death this way, I must deny any future thing I could care to do.