The heartbeat of time breathes down the back of my neck, a steady pulse I can neither ignore nor escape. Each tick echoes like a drum in some distant chamber, reminding me that every moment is fragile, fleeting, and always slipping through my fingers. It is a whisper and a shove all at once, urging me forward, while warning me that hesitation has a cost. I feel the weight of unseen years pressing in, the soft exhale of tomorrow chasing me, and the relentless rhythm of now demanding I move, speak, and live before the next beat claims its turn.
I imagine time not as some invisible force, but as a living presence, hovering just over my shoulder. Its breath is cool, almost damp, like the mist of dawn before the sun has claimed the sky. With every inhale, it draws in the stories I have yet to live; with every exhale, it gives me a choice—step into the current or be left behind. It does not scream, though its silence is louder than anything I’ve ever known.
Sometimes I try to outrun it, filling my days with noise and motion, hoping that if I move fast enough, I’ll forget its hand is always there. But in the quiet hours, when the world exhales and the night folds in on itself, I feel it most. The ticking becomes a tide, slow and patient, eroding all excuses. It does not judge, but it does not wait.
Every second is a question: What will you do with me? Every minute is an opportunity that burns bright and then dissolves like smoke. I carry both a fear and a reverence for this rhythm, for the way it reminds me that I am alive only in the spaces I dare to inhabit fully. And so I listen, I move, and I try to answer time’s pulse with my own, before the next beat passes into memory forever.
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” – James 4:13-14
Being About The Journey 