The Thinking Sapling

Now, I’m pretty sure everyone knows what it feels like to have too little time. For me recently, it’s been that sinking feeling of an exam looming, and knowing deep down I didn’t study enough. It happens a lot, doesn’t it? These brief flashes where we desperately wish for just a bit more time. But then I took a step back—to look at the time I have as a whole—and I found something far more daunting: The fact that it could last three or four times longer.

The empty years ahead prompt the question: what am I even supposed to fill them with? Sure, there’s the traditional checklist: graduate, find a job, start a family, retire. But that random list doesn’t exactly plug the gaping hole that is the half a century I might still live. Somehow, I’m both panicking over too little time and dreading how much of it stretches ahead!

It’s often said we ought to live life to the fullest, since we never know when it’ll end. But honestly? It ending isn’t the problem. The real question is: how do we make sure every moment is full? Even if we cram as many things into each second as possible, we still face countless moments of quiet nothingness. Time doesn’t slow down for us—but neither does it speed up.

I don’t know if you, dear reader, are sympathetic or merely amused by all this turmoil. But for me, it leaves behind a haunting image: a future where I’ve done everything on my bucket list—and now I’m just sitting in a chair, staring for hours at the floor. That’s the fear.

Maybe I’m looking at it all wrong. Why does each moment mean something to us? Because, somehow, deep down, we care about some part of it. The fact that I’m even writing this means I care about what my future becomes. The fact that you’re reading it means you care—at least a little—about where this train of thought goes. What gives a moment meaning is whatever our very being turns its gaze toward. We don’t enter these moments thinking we’ll wish for more time. But we end up asking for more anyway, because in those moments, our lives were full.

So here I am, looking ahead and seeing nothing but emptiness—was that always inevitable? How can I care for a world that doesn’t yet exist? I can’t just manufacture dreams and goals to neatly fill the decades ahead. Not without living through some of it first. I can only ever daydream so far into the future… and when I get there, new dreams will arrive.

So maybe it’s not that the future is empty, but rather that I’m trying to fill it too early, from a place of not knowing. There will be meaning, once I care for those moments. I simply have to wait and rest in the meaning that already exists. Who knows, maybe I’ll still find myself complaining I had too little time—even if I managed to live every moment, all the way to the end.