Is it coincidence?

In all the billions of years of history that have existed in this universe, do you consider it a remarkable coincidence that 'the present' just happens to be during your brief lifespan here on earth, roughly 1/100,000,000 of the time that has existed?

Or is it simply that it cannot be any other way, that time as such does not exist and we perceive the 'present' to be during our lives simply because it is the only 'time' we are aware of?

Chew on that one for a while.

The remarkable coincidence IMHO is that we are living in a "present" which happens to be only one or two human generations from the very special point in the history of our universe (at least locally) where a few gifted samples of our species (i.e. Albert Einstein) had evolved the intelligence to invent modern physics and actually consider the question, "what is time?" in a scientific way. How cool and lucky is that!

To more directly address your muse, in what other time can one exist other than the present? Thus I think we do, "perceive the 'present' to be during our lives simply because it is the only 'time' we are aware of" This leads to one of the fascinating things about amateur astronomy, we can look back into the distant past and see it now as it was then.