I keep hearing about people leaving us suddenly. One day they’re here, among us, and the next they’re gone. Every time I hear this, my heart stops for a long second. And I think: how easy it is to forget that we’re here on borrowed time.
How easy it’s to forget that nothing is guaranteed, not the next day or the next Sunday morning. We live as if life is something we own, when really, life is something we’re allowed to hold for a while. And because we forget this, we tighten.
We try to force things to happen. We make strategies. We push the river. We worry the future into shapes it never agreed to take. We measure ourselves against others and ask: Am I late? Am I doing enough? Am I becoming what I’m supposed to become?
But maybe life doesn’t ask us to make everything happen. Maybe life is asking us to let it be. To stop wrestling with what’s here now. To stop treating the present moment as an obstacle on the way to some better version of our life.
To stop thinking peace will arrive only after the job, the move, the relationship, the answer, the success, the perfect plan.
Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations (Book 2.11), “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
That sentence lands differently when someone has just left. It doesn’t say: panic. It doesn’t say: hurry. It says: remember. Remember what matters before life has to shake you by the shoulders.
Remember the one sitting across from you is also here on borrowed time. Remember the body you criticize is carrying you through another day. Remember the person you’re annoyed with may be carrying a grief you know nothing about. Remember that being right is a lonely, temporary victory, while being kind is what holds us together.
I’m not saying we should abandon our dreams, our work, or our longing to create a fuller life. I’m saying that maybe we can hold our desires with a softer hand. Maybe we can still build, but without bullying life. Maybe we can still hope, but without making the present feel like a punishment. Maybe we can still want more, while loving what’s already here.
Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, gave us three instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Attention may be the beginning of love. To pay attention is to stop passing people by while pretending we’re too busy to see them. It’s to notice the tone in someone’s voice. The tiredness behind their smile. The way they need us to listen, not fix.
Simone Weil, often described as a modern-day saint, lived a brief but profoundly impactful life driven by deep compassion, social solidarity, and a relentless pursuit of truth. She wrote: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Maybe that’s what we can give each other while we’re still here. Not perfection. Not solutions. Not constant advice. But attention. A little more patience. A little more mercy. A little more willingness to understand before we defend ourselves.
A little more love toward the people around us, especially the imperfect ones, which means all of us. Because everyone we love will become a memory. And one day, we’ll become a memory too.
This isn’t meant to make us sad. It’s meant to soften our heart. Being soft isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom after it’s been touched by loss. Being soft knows the argument may not be worth it. It knows the dishes can wait. It knows the email can be answered tomorrow. It knows the person in front of us isn’t an interruption. They’re a gift inside the life we keep saying we’re trying to live.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in The Book of Hours, “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
So maybe, starting this Sunday, we practice letting life happen a little more. We let the unfinished thing stay unfinished for a little longer. We let people be human on their terms, not ours. And we let ourselves be human too.
Let’s not wait for loss to teach us how to love. Let’s soften our hearts now, while we’re still here. Because, my friend, this day is borrowed too.