Right now, someone is typing "I’m happy to announce" into a LinkedIn text box. They just landed the role. They’re feeling that specific, fleeting high of being chosen. At the exact same second, three tabs over or two houses down, someone is holding a newborn for the first time and realizing a whole new world just started.
And in that same heartbeat, someone else is sitting in a hospital hallway, realizing they’ll never hear a specific person’s voice again.
The world is a massive, overlapping grid of peak highs and subterranean lows, all happening at 3:05 PM on a Tuesday. We like to think that knowing this, knowing that time is a relentless, indifferent engine - should "inspire" us. We’re told that because "time waits for no one," we should be bolder, faster, more confident.
But that’s a half-truth.
The "do it because we’re all going to die" advice is shallow. It suggests that once you realize your mortality, you’ll never feel lazy again. It implies that existential dread is a battery you can just plug into your productivity.
It’s not.
I know I’m going to die. I know the clock is ticking while I’m scrolling through a feed of people "killing it." And yet, I still feel tired. I still have days where I don’t want to be "solid" or "grind." I still feel the weight of comparison, even when I know the person I’m comparing myself to is just another point on that grid of simultaneity.
The point isn't to "use" time before it’s gone. The point is just that it’s going. Whether you are standing on a stage or you’re too burnt out to get out of bed, the evolution doesn’t pause to let you catch up. There is no message in the ticking clock - there’s just the tick.
Maybe the beauty isn't in the "doing." Maybe the beauty is just in the fact that we are part of the noise. The good days, the shitty days, the "I can't do this" days - they are all happening at once, for everyone, forever.