Read This When You Think Time Isn’t On Your Side

No matter what age we are or what stage we are at in life, we always seem to find ourselves wanting more time.

More time for ourselves.

More time to be with our loved ones.

More time to just be.

But what we don’t often realize is that with each moment we spend begging time to slow down, we lose our chance to be present. What if all of the time you spent wishing you could make a moment last, you actually spent enjoying that moment? Maybe our time here is a lot longer than any of us realize, and all we need to do is stop measuring our moments in increments and start making the most of them.

All throughout my life I can remember my struggle with time. From the simple moments of worrying about being late to school to the moments that I wished I could make last a lifetime but knew I would never get back. For some reason life has a funny way of stretching out the most agonizing aspects of our lives and shortening those which bring us joy. Why does a sickness seem to last for eternities, while an “I love you” is gone the moment it leaves our lips?

Three years sounds like such a small sliver of our lives when pitted against 25 years of memories, yet it is amazing the immense amount of damage one can endure in such a short period of time. Every day can seem unending when all you have is a handful of memories which make you happy and an onslaught of times you wish you could make disappear. When we are living in a moment, the full scale of its impact is unknown to us, so we often do not realize the traumatic consequences until it is much too late.

This does not mean we should live in constant fear or tip-toe around making difficult decisions in order to save ourselves from the pain looming in the distance. Each experience we face, good or bad shapes us into the person we are supposed to be. Maybe the pain of those three long years happened to teach you how to take care of yourself and that your value is never to be determined by someone else. Maybe that last moment you shared with your loved one was one that occurred to tell you that sometimes you need to learn to slow down. We spend so much time rushing from one thing to the next that it becomes so easy to lose track of all that we already have.

It is impossible to be in constant control of everything happening in your life, but what is possible is how you perceive the outcome. You can either see it as three years you wasted with the wrong person, or you can recognize the amount of growth you achieved throughout those years and the newfound strength you acquired just making it through them. Time does not have to be your enemy. Like it or not, it will always be just outside of your grasp. We can spend years planning for one specific moment, and in a matter of minutes, everything we thought we had can be ripped away from us. The clock does not stop ticking because you asked it to. The second hand often seems to spin faster in those moments where we would give anything for it to stop. Time will continue to pass, and it is up to you how you choose to utilize it.

We can either sit and wait for something to change and for the pain to pass, or we can seize the moment and do all that we can to make the most of it.

Time does not have to be your enemy. Look at it as a way to help you keep track of all the beautiful moments you have encountered thus far. Just know that your life will keep going even when the worst events have occurred because time does not stop when an opportunity leaves us or a relationship ends. The clock always keeps going and so will you.