We talk about time as though it were a place.
Behind us.
Ahead of us.
Running out.
Saving it.
Wasting it.
But time does not seem particularly interested in our vocabulary.
It keeps going.
A child becomes taller.
Bread becomes stale.
A wound becomes a scar.
A conversation becomes a memory.
The present arrives and immediately becomes something else.
You cannot hold it.
You can only be in it.
This can be frightening.
We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to return to moments that are already gone.
If only I had said something different.
If only I had stayed.
If only I had left sooner.
The past is full of doors that no longer open.
But there is another strange thing about time.
It does not only take.
It also makes.
A seed becomes a tree.
A stranger becomes a friend.
Practice becomes skill.
Grief becomes memory.
A collection of ordinary days becomes a life.
Time changes the shape of things.
Sometimes slowly enough that we don’t notice.
Then one day we look in the mirror and realize we have been becoming someone.
Not necessarily the person we planned.
Just someone.
Perhaps this is why the present matters so much.
It is the only part of the river you can actually touch.
You cannot step into yesterday.
Tomorrow has not arrived.
There is only this particular patch of water moving beneath your feet.
That does not mean planning is useless.
It means plans belong to the present too.
You prepare now.
You choose now.
You apologize now.
You rest now.
You begin now.
The future is built out of these small moments that don’t look important while you are inside them.
And the past?
The past can still teach.
It just cannot be edited.
Perhaps acceptance is partly learning to stop negotiating with what has already happened.
Not approving of it.
Not pretending it was good.
Just recognizing that the river has already carried that piece of water downstream.
You can remember it.
You can mourn it.
You can learn from it.
You cannot swim backward and retrieve it.
Fancy Dust seems unusually comfortable with this.
It has no known schedule.
It appears wherever it pleases.
Perhaps this is because Fancy Dust understands something we keep forgetting:
Nothing stays still.
Not even the glitter.
So maybe we don’t need to catch time.
Maybe we only need to notice where we are.
The river is moving.
You are in it.
For now—
that is enough.
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