It's a scary thing to reach the end of your life and realize you never showed up for the journey.

I like to think of myself as somebody who has experienced most of the core parts of life. Not all of it, of course. Nobody could do that. There are far too many perspectives and versions of this world to live through, more than one could ever dream of seeing. It is genuinely impossible to experience everything life has to offer. But you can, absolutely, borrow other people's experiences and worldviews. It's called "putting yourself in someone else's shoes" and people do it all the time. We do it when we hear a story told in first person, when we listen to a podcast about a stranger's life, and most of all, when we read. I personally, have spent most of my life reading. So much so that because of it, my family and peers were worried about my mental health more times than I can count. I never really understood why they pulled their hair out for something as simple as reading books for fifteen hours a day. I say it is a strange thing to fixate on in someone whose worst crime is being addicted to fictional characters, and not, say, having an Instagram or pointless partying addiction, like most of my peers.

Coming back to other people's stories and perspectives, none of that matters if you don't use it. In this blog I present to you, my dear reader, the one thing which every book, podcast and other people's regrets have taught me, boiled down to a set of three truths. When you start reading them, you won't want to believe them to be true, but I assure you that you will realize your faults once you start reaching the end of this page. So, without further ado, let's start with our first truth.

1) The Currency Called "Later" Does NOT Exist

You mustn't spend eight decades merely preparing to live, only to realize at eighty that you never even took the first step. And when you're that old, the sympathy that you get from others doesn't help much.

Your greatest fear should not be your favorite football team losing, rather it should be the thought of sitting with a cabinet full of achievements, a pension, and a mansion, but never actually having lived... The trophies that you will have earned will never be able to hug you back, and the mansion that you will have built will never once remember your birthday. Studying and working sixty-plus hours a week, coming home with no energy left except to scroll, will cost you an entire alternate life you could've lived. (Congratulations, by the way, on becoming an Olympic-level thumb athlete. Though unfortunately, there is no award ceremony) You keep telling yourself, and the people you love, that once this obstacle is over, you'll take that trip. Once this task is done, you'll spend the night out. Once this exam is written and done, you'll finally be happy. And while you keep making these promises, in the meantime you miss out on actually being there for your real friends. I'm not talking about your distant peers or some casual colleagues, I'm talking about the ones who genuinely care about you, and show up for you at your lowest, even while they're low themselves. Missing out on such friends will be one of the most brutal scars you inflict on yourself, and you only feel the full weight of it once you hit old age.

"We'll do it later" is an imaginary currency. You print it all the time and hand it out to everyone around you, but it holds no true value in the real world because you rarely, if ever, redeem that currency. And every time that it goes unredeemed, you unknowingly lose the chance of living out a memory that could have quite possibly shaped who you became.

Stop waiting for the perfect conditions to be present. The best time to start was maybe ten years ago. The second best time is now.

2) Even When It's Fully Achieved, A Hollow Goal Will Always Stay Hollow:
You could become successful by every standard that this society has invented to measure your success. You could be respected for your "hard work and diligence" (the exact two words that every school, college, and office says when it can't think of anything more interesting to say about you). And you would still, somehow, end up feeling hollow... In a sense of emptiness.

Say you became the Doctor you always wanted to be. Say you check off every one of your nine goals. (Yeah, nine, not ten. round numbers are numerologically lucky apparently. But that's a blog for another day wink, wink.) But God forbid, say that right as you get there, someone close to you falls seriously ill, with little time left. How gut-wrenched would you feel, trying to cram thirty missed years of memories into the three months they have left, all because you cared more about reaching a goal that turned out to be empty than about the people who were right in front of you this whole time?

3) Forget Your Deadline And Run Towards Your Kitchen: At the funeral of someone you love, nobody stands up and talks about all the exams that person scored well on, the profit margins that they hit, or the workout routines they kept for their fat loss goals. Instead, they talk about their kindness, how charismatic they were, and the warmth they radiated when they were around. And those could be the exact things that you are failing to experience right now, because you're too busy building a future in the far distance, without holding dear the precious things which you already possess.

Your success, status, money, and properties... none of them belong to you. They will all eventually be left behind one day. What truly did belong to you were the moments you kept throwing away while telling yourself that you could always buy them back later. That was the flaw in your perfect plan. Those moments are priceless, and priceless things cannot be refunded. Time is the one thing on earth which unfortunately, doesn't come with a refund policy.

I know with a hundred percent certainty that you, my dear reader, are going to be one of the most successful people the world has ever seen. I know for a fact that you will be an amazing doctor. Or an engineer, a researcher, a scientist, a business person, an athlete, or whatever else it may be that you desire to become. But if you keep neglecting your present to build that future, there will come a day when you'd trade every last penny of what you've earned just to go back to one Saturday morning, to wake up to the smell of your mother cooking breakfast. Would you still reach for your textbook? Still open your laptop? Or would you run to the kitchen and hug your mother, tell your father everything you never said out loud, and pick up your sibling (even though they're bossy, and will probably kick you for it) and play the childish games you're "too old" for, while they're still young enough to want to play them with you? I believe I speak for the both of us when I say you'd choose the latter.

(In the heading for the third point, the word "Kitchen" is just a placeholder. What I mean is for you to drop whatever you are doing right now, no matter how important it seems and just reach out the the closest loved one you have. It may be hugging a family member who is across the room, or reaching out to your BFF through a phone call. And I'm serious, go do it right now!)

Re-Program The Way You Speak About Time

Problem: The words you use to describe putting off things for a future time determines how comfortable you become with it. "Later" sounds like a completely harmless and even a responsible thing to say. But every time you say it, you're also telling the person in front of you that they're not worth interrupting your schedule for.

Examples:

• "Once this exam is over, I'll be happy" - so you're saying happiness waits outside the door of your exam hall?
• "Once this deal closes, I'll take that trip with you" - so the trip forever will live just "one deal away", just like that gym membership of yours that will somehow definitely start on every Monday?
• "We'll catch up soon" - So "soon" that it quietly becomes the only tense you speak in.

Solution: Replace the language of postponement with the language of presence. Say what you mean to actually do, not what you intend to eventually get around to.

Example:

• Instead of saying "we'll do this later" say "Let's do it today, doesn't matter even if it's just for ten minutes."
• Instead of "I don't have time right now" say "I am choosing something else right now" and let that sentence embarrass you into changing your choice.

Remember: the weight of what you didn't do is heavier than anything you'll ever accomplish. If someone who loves you wants your time, be it with a simple chat in the living room, a hangout, or a phone call just to hear your voice, give it to them. Not tomorrow, next week, or "after this next episode" (we both know that show has fourteen seasons and you're not even that invested). Not after the exam or the deadline, but Now.

Final Note

There is a law that governs every life, whether you acknowledge it or not: Time does not pause for the ones who are ambitious, nor does it wait for the ones who aren't ready. It only knows how to move forward, being completely indifferent to how prepared you are. One day you will be sitting in a quiet room and realize that the "later" you were counting on was only ever a ghost, which you spent years chasing while your actual life stood right in front of you, waiting to be noticed. The clock is still ticking. It is not too late. Not yet.

Save. Your. Life.

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