borrowed time/acceptance

i’ve been sitting with the reality that we’re all living on borrowed time. no matter how strong we feel, no matter how much we plan, nothing is truly ours to keep. every heartbeat, every breath, every day—it’s all temporary

for a long time, i resisted that truth. i wanted to believe i had more control than i do. i thought if i worked harder, prayed harder, held on tighter, maybe i could make life stretch further than it was meant to. but no matter what, time slips away. it doesn’t ask for permission. it just keeps moving.

acceptance isn’t easy. there are days i still want to fight it, to demand more time, more certainty, more guarantees. but the more i sit with it, the more i realize that fighting only makes me bitter. acceptance doesn’t erase the fear, it just quiets it enough for me to keep living. it’s choosing to say, if this is what i have, i’ll be present in it.

living on borrowed time changes the way you see things. you stop waiting for someday to love people out loud. you stop holding back what you feel because you’re scared of how it’ll be received. you stop wasting your days trying to prove something to everyone else. instead, you focus on what’s real, connection, presence, honesty.

it makes you look at arguments differently. are they worth carrying if tomorrow isn’t promised? it makes you question what you prioritize, the distractions, the noise, the things that drain you. you start to realize that none of that matters when you measure life by how fragile it really is.

what does matter is how deeply you love. did you forgive? did you show grace? did you live true to yourself? did you spend time with the people who matter most? did you say the words you always held back? did you leave pieces of yourself in a way that someone else could carry when you’re gone?

i don’t know how much time i have, & that used to haunt me. but now i see it differently. the unknown is what makes life urgent, what makes it worth paying attention to. if i knew the end, i’d probably waste more of the middle. not knowing forces me to live now.

so i try. i try to give myself fully to the moments i’m in. i try to tell people i love them while they can still hear it. i try to stop waiting for perfect timing, because perfect timing doesn’t exist. i try to live in a way that, whenever the clock runs out, i’ll know i didn’t hold back the best of me.

that’s what borrowed time has taught me. that the point was never to outlast it. the point is to use it well, to live in it fully, to leave without regret.

-rl