Dear You,
I know you won't read this in time, but I hope it makes it to you soon. I've been thinking a lot lately about life: what we do with it and and how much time we have. Isn't that odd? We don't know how much time we have, and yet we think about it like we can say, "Oh, I'll live to be 74 years and 12 weeks" with certainty. It's crazy! Tomorrow it could all be over and then what? What did we accomplish? What is our "legacy"?
Well, tomorrow comes far too soon-- too fast. Accomplishments and plans meant to be achieved are halted. They're put off for another tomorrow or handed over to someone else because you didn't have the time to complete it. Time... A construct of man based on the "rise and fall" of a gaseous ball of light in the sky. We all know what would happen without the sun, but lets imagine for a second imminent death wasn't the result.
Tonight, the sun won't set. You may decide to close the blinds, close the curtains, pull down the shade, get an eye-mask, pull the pillow over your head... You may try to keep a schedule based on time as you've lived it over the years. But for how long? If after five days you notice the sun just isn't setting anymore, how much more would you try to get done in "a day"? How long before you forget to look at the clock and lose track of time?
We don't live in a world where the sun is always up, and yet somehow we still lose track of time. So many people joked at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was in lockdown, that they didn't even know what day of the week it was anymore. How does that happen so quickly? If that worries you, then just imagine how many of us are oblivious to time passing by until we celebrate another holiday or a birthday. So many of us are on autopilot throughout the days and years and we lose out on so much around us.
A psychology professor I had in university taught us that to prevent this we had to be "mindful". Mindfulness... To be present... A scary task for some people who try to go their whole lives unaware of their traumas and/or thoughts. Which leads me back to you.
How long were you on autopilot before you tuned into reality? How many days did you lose before you picked the day to "wake up"?
It must have been a long time...
I didn't get this to you in time because I too, for a while there, was on autopilot. I wasn't living; I was alive, but not living. I didn't realize how important it was to reach out; to let you know that you too were not living but still could. And now, it's tomorrow and I can't reach out to you and get this message across as I would like. But maybe, in doing it this way, it'll reach more people. Maybe, more people will question their existence and they'll wake up... Even if you'll always be asleep.
Time. We don't know how much there is, so we need to make every second count. I hope you do. I hope you find your light to keep you going. And when you feel like you can't find it, look towards the sun. It'll always be there to guide you through another day.
I hope you get this...
-Me♥