The list of things I don't understand grows faster than the list of things I do. The more you know, the more you see what you don't. Every answer unlocks three new questions. I've made peace with that truth. If wisdom were finite, curiosity would die. The day you stop being surprised by how much you don't know is the day you stop growing. But there's one thing I do know: time owes me nothing. I can't bargain with it. I can't slide a note across the counter and say, "I'll take more of that later, please." I'm a passenger of time. Life's going to drag me through many stages, whether I cooperate or not. I'm looping through the same patterns over and over: love, loss, work, boredom, curiosity, risk, retreat.
Restart.
But I can play the like I own it.
Then start again.
You don't get more time. You just get better at using it. You're here to set your soul on fire through the stages of life. I'm not here to "arrive" at some final, flawless version of myself. There's only circling back with better instincts and fewer wasted years. You're never stuck. Even when it feels like it. Every stage ends. Every loop resets.
The goal is minimal regrets.
Not none.
Zero regrets is a fantasy we tell ourselves to make bad decisions feel noble. The real aim is to waste less time on things you don't care about and more time on the ones you do. That's why I aim to set my soul on fire again and again, imperfectly. You win by staying in it, alive and awake.
I like what author Hunter S. Thompson said, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!'"
People who try to preserve themselves end up more tired and anxious. They're so busy guarding their time, they forget to spend or invest it. Say yes to what makes you come alive. Everything that helps you find flow. Stop being reasonable. Start being alive. Energy returns; time doesn't. When things go sideways (and they will), lean into the wisdom. "Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing," says author Helen Keller. I'm not saying burn out or throw yourself into chaos for the sake of it. I'm saying use yourself. Push the machine. Book the experience. Take the risk that makes you lose your sense of time.
"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." — Diane Ackerman
You're not here to solve time.
Or life.
You're here to outplay it.
The secret isn't to hurry , it's to live on purpose. To know that even if you can't control the clock, you can control how you spend the minutes. That's where the power is. Not in having more time, but in burning through the time you have, like it matters. It pays to defend your time like your life depends on it. Be greedy with your days. Be stingy with your attention. Treat "later" like the scam it is. Take each day of life as a separate life. Spend your next 24 hours on quality experiences.
And then loop back for another round.
One day, the clock wins.
It always does. But that's not the tragedy. The tragedy is living like you had no choice but to sit it out. "Begin at once to live," says Stoic philosopher Seneca. Say the thing. Live hard, fix it, screw up better. Risk changing your mind. Wear out the days until they can't carry you anymore. And when the end comes, you'll know you didn't wait for life to knock.
You kicked the damn door in.
The point is not to be done. But to leave nothing important unsaid, nothing vital undone. The list of things you don't understand will still be longer than the list of things you do. But you'll be too busy living to care.
Most people are not running out of time.
They're running out of nerve.
They're waiting for certainty, for permission, for the perfect sequence of events to fall into place. Meanwhile, the clock's already cashing in their days like loose change. Burn through time on purpose. Make your days expensive to waste. Guard your attention like it's the only currency you'll ever have. And in a way, it is. Trade it for things that make you feel electric, alive, impossible to ignore. Trade it for the people who make you forget to check your phone. You're losing life to time daily.
As you get closer to the inevitable, let life find you exhausted. Let it find you so used up that there's little regret. And when the lights go out, make sure the last thing you're thinking is:
"Damn. That was fun."