The Lie We Live By
Journal Entry, May 3rd of the Year 2025
Dear Reader,
If I ask you what your North Star is, what would you tell me?
I reckon you would have an answer - at least something that is always on your mind. A dream? A path? A version of yourself you would like to meet someday?
But if I ask you this: what are you doing to follow it?
Do you have an answer?
It is a pleasant Saturday evening here. I am sitting with my thoughts alone, my mind buzzing with things I want to do, ideas I want to chase, dreams I keep filling into the “later” folder. (How much of our lives are structured around planning and deferral!)
I then realized that I had been living with an unspoken assumption: that “later” will always be there.
How often and casually I say, “I will do it next year”, “Once I get that job”, ‘When things fall into place”, “When I am ready”…
Everything that we put on hold until a mythical future arrives. And what if it never does?
There is a lie we all live by, one that we rarely confront. The lie is this: we have time.
Time to become who we want to be. Time to make amends. Time to write the book, take the trip, heal ourselves.
We convince ourselves that there is a finish line somewhere far off in the distance, that death is somewhere on the horizon, and we will meet when we are old and ready.
But in truth, it is always close. So close that it could tap you on the shoulder in the middle of this sentence. You never know.
And yet, we plan our lives like we are immortal, like we have all the time in the world to begin with. We set goals and milestones as if life has guaranteed stages.
But what if it all ends tomorrow?
What if the chance to experience, to change, to learn, to love - dies with us? The opportunity to be here at all - to breathe, to think, to feel anything - is rare and fickle.
Once gone, it is gone forever.
Most people die without ever having lived fully. Not because they did not want to, but because they always assumed they had more time. How little we truly respect the uncertainty of existence. We assume time instead of honoring it.
But what if it wasn’t? What if this, right now, is all you will ever get?
Why do we need the threat of death to feel the beauty of life? Maybe, in forgetting death, we forget how to live?
When we realize that nothing is promised, everything starts to matter.
So dear friend, start the thing. Now.
With you in thought,
Yana
