Stop wasting time. Stop waiting for the weekend. Stop waiting for holiday. Stop living vicariously through social media and the lives of others. Grab time, clutch onto it, hold it to your chest like a sacred artifact or a love letter. Make the most of it. Love exactly where you are, here and now, being; existing; breathing life into your lungs. Be awake. Open your eyes to the wonders around you, even if those wonders are confined to an office, a messy house that you don’t have time to clean, an annoyingly crowded grocery store. Look around you and you will feel more connected to what’s inside of you. Love your day, your week, your life.
Stop complaining because of your bills and society and the cruel world we live in. These are outside of us; we have only ourselves and our choices; that is the ripple effect we must leave behind. Stop going places and wishing you weren’t there. Stop saying yes to things that make you miserable. Learn to take a break when you aren’t at peace. Learn to go places and see people who do bring you peace. Stop living a half-life and wonder why you feel empty. Explore. Adventure. Embrace the moment. Stop dancing sheepishly to good music. Stop having average fun. Stop being bored. Stop playing it safe, for fear of ridicule and judgement. Just stop and look around. There’s much to be done.
For Time is temporal and turning, the timeline irrevocably altering, its tendons thirsty for memory, its deadline forever lurking. Time, it laughs at humanity at these torpid beings who only touch Time’s surface and travail Time’s traumas. Yet Time is not the travesty, for time-wasted is the true tragedy – an untenable and untimely erosion of ticks and tocks.
Do not erode your spirit, your zest for life, your need to be great and to do great things. Stop limiting yourself to the comfort of what you know and search the depths of what you don’t. It is poisonous to wish time away, and then realise how much you want it back when it’s too late. Stop showing up late for life. Live now, while you can. Because time gives before it takes. And that’s a blessing. Have gratitude. Too many people take for granted the immeasurable possibility of joy that lies in the very period you overlooked, wasted, wished for the weekend.
Time isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t always feel like a friend. You will mourn. You will hurt. But when there’s opportunity for life to be full, take it. Stop living and doing and loving half. Live and do and love in full, and you will feel whole where the holes once were.
You are here, it’s a great place to be.
Anastasia Amy 