6 min read

The Time Is Up

The time is up. Now has come the moment everybody keeps referring to as future. There is no future. There is no not now. There is the present, the heat of the moment, or nothing. Void. Darkness. There are no steps. There is just one giant, overwhelming leap: the life. Or so they call it. There is no time left. Nothing is surplus. The clocks don’t stop. They keep running, ticking away the moments (that make up your dull days). There’s no more than little for you, maybe even less. There are no bonuses, there are only penalties. There are no plans. They are an illusion. There’s just the living glimpse, the moment. Apart from it, there’s always less than desirable. Less than everyone thinks there is.

 And now the time is up, and I don’t know what to say. There’s no point in saying anything. There’s no point in doing anything. If only there was something left. But there is not. With time, everything is gone. I can see it, hear it, feel it, hell, I can talk to it; but it doesn’t exist anymore. Not in the way it did. It’s distant. Nobody gets it. Nobody ever has.

It’s making me cry. It’s making me laugh. I can’t decide. I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure I can do anything anymore. Sure I can, there is just no point. There is no time. It slipped outside the frame of what we feel and live. It’s strange. Everything seems quiet, yet it’s the same. Almost. Nothing will ever be the same.

Time’s up. I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have done most of the things I’ve done. There was a better way to do it. There always is. There always is a better way to live. But you couldn’t know. If you knew, you would act differently. But you didn’t, and you coped the best you could, and so did I, so did everyone. There’s no way back. There’s no way forward. There is no way anywhere at all. And looking for it eats you, burns you from the inside out, until you are just a husk. With no past, no future, no life.

 Time is short. Regret is bitter. Don’t dive in it. You don’t want the taste on your tongue. You don’t want that sharp, stinging pain in your heart.

“This can’t happen to me.”, you hear people say. They really do think so. But it can. Chances are it will. And when it does, they just stop in awe, change their view about everything – and regret. They weren’t prepared, they didn’t realize it can happen. They were blind. They were stupid. They didn’t listen to any advice.

I’m tired of giving advice. Nobody listens to it. Nobody will. There will be no more advice anymore. But what advantage do I have from being able to say “Hey, I’ve told you. I was right.” in their faces? Nothing, nothing at all. We are all equally miserable, and it does not matter who was right and who was wrong. The only difference there is, is that I am not surprised. I knew it all along.

Now, it doesn’t even matter what our names are. Nothing matters. Things mattered until now. Things mattered during all those countless moments in the past. But nobody listened, nobody thought so. Nobody cared about the things that mattered. And now that they are lost, it’s too late. So very late. So late that there is no time left anymore.

People always think that what matters is the mysterious future. They don’t realize that what matters is happening right now. Precisely in this moment, in this very short point in time. They hurry and race towards something, towards something so vague, so unclear that it is not even worth waiting for. But they still do, because they believe. They believe something will change. They believe that someday, they will stop and suddenly realize that they are happy, that they had achieved what they were looking for. But they won’t. It’s an illusion. They can’t cope with reality, so they invent the future. But there is none. None at all.

Time is a misguided concept. Nobody gets it. Nobody is able to cope with it.

People come and go. Or so we think. The truth is that they are never completely gone. They still remain deep in our minds. People change us. They change our lives, our faces, our vision. There have been many people in my life. Some of them I loved, some of them I hated. Some of them I didn’t care about. And I don’t regret a minute in my life that I have (not) spent with this or that particular person. I used my time well. I could have done better, much better, and didn’t. But it was a good try.

A good try is all there is. All there was. There will be no more tries. There is no time left.

The time is up. It’s not important what I think about it. Nothing is important besides the fact that now the time ran out, for you, for me, for everyone. Now is the time to see what we could have done. Now is the time to see how terribly wrong everyone was. Now we have nothing left except for what we have lived, what we have felt. But there is no future for feelings. There is no time for feelings. Feelings are timeless.

The moment is everything we had. And nothing I say now changes anything about you or me or anyone else. Nothing I tried to say in the present made any difference either. It’s making me cry. Now it is the future. And it’s not nearly as fancy as most people blindly believed. The future does not really exist. It is an illusion. The present we felt and lived is all we had. People don’t listen when there is still time. But now there is no time anymore.

The time is up.