Read This While You’re Still Here
I wrote this out of fear that attention fades long before life does, and that by the time we notice, we’ve already left ourselves behind.
They told us time was a river,
something you float on or drown in.
They were wrong.
It is a hand.
It takes without asking,
and gives only when you are not looking.
It takes in small units.
In unread messages.
In knees that ache before the storm.
In the way a name on your tongue
slowly turns into a fact instead of a feeling.
I used to think loss was dramatic.
A door slamming. A final word.
But loss is mostly administrative.
It files you away.
It changes the password.
It replaces your face with a memory
that works only in certain lighting.
I have lived in that office of forgetting.
I learned the language.
I learned how to nod while disappearing.
I learned how to say “later”
until later hardened into never.
I told myself this was wisdom:
to stop asking the world for more
than it seemed willing to give.
I told myself restraint was depth,
that shrinking was the same as peace.
It is not.
Listen—
there is a silent crime no one is arrested for:
allowing your days to pass
without being witnessed.
Letting your life become a rumor
even to yourself.
You think the enemy is chaos.
It isn’t.
Chaos at least rearranges the furniture.
The real danger is repetition
performed so well it feels like stability.
I have met the thief.
He does not run.
He does not hide.
He sits with you.
He sounds reasonable.
He says:
“Not today.”
“Be patient.”
“You’ll do it when things settle.”
He says, “You have time,”
and means, “You will forget.”
And I believed him.
I believed him until the moment I realized
I could not remember the last time
I was fully inside my own body.
Until joy started to feel
like something happening to other people
through glass.
That is when the clock cracked.
Not loudly.
Just enough to let the truth through.
You are not here to be efficient.
You are not here to be optimized,
or archived,
or endlessly prepared.
You are here to be spent.
Not wasted—
spent, like a candle that understands
its purpose is light, not longevity.
This is not about ambition.
This is not about legacy.
This is about contact.
About touching what is real
before it turns symbolic.
About saying the thing
before it becomes a eulogy.
About choosing presence
over polish,
risk over rehearsal.
The age we live in
will sell you delay in infinite flavors.
It will call it strategy.
It will call it self-care.
It will call it prudence.
But it will never call it what it is:
fear dressed as patience.
So here is my warning,
soft but sharp:
Do not confuse waiting with listening.
Do not confuse comfort with safety.
Do not confuse being busy
with being alive.
If you are afraid, good.
That means you have found the edge.
If you are tired, rest—
but rest facing the thing you want,
not turned away from it.
If you have lost faith in meaning,
then anchor yourself to moments.
If moments fail you,
anchor yourself to breath.
If even breath feels borrowed,
anchor yourself to this:
you are still here.
And that means something
is still being asked of you.
There will come a day
that looks exactly like any other
when you will be offered a choice
so small it barely registers:
to speak, or let it pass.
To step forward, or stay aligned.
To inhabit the minute,
or outsource it to habit.
Nothing will announce this moment.
There will be no music.
Only a slight pressure in the chest.
Only the sense that something is watching.
That something is your life.
It will not ask if you were right.
It will not ask if you were safe.
It will ask only:
“Were you present
while I was happening?”
This is not a call to burn everything down.
This is a call to light one thing up
and keep it lit.
Say the sentence.
Make the move.
Touch the hand.
Begin badly.
Let time take what it will.
Give it something worthy to steal.
You do not need forever.
You need now—
undiluted,
unpostponed,
and fully yours.
the ordinary, the flawed, the beautiful, and the eternal.
The Parlor Shelf
Here are a few of my favorite articles from the past week that I saved:
I think a lot of women, even outside this specific practice, will recognize the exhaustion of constantly seeing themselves through the eyes of the world first. The section about social media and front-facing cameras especially hit home because so much modern life trains women into perpetual self-observation. What I found compelling is that the writer describe the veil less as restriction and more as relief.
This essay is a self-interrogation of labels, identity, and rhetorical posture, moving from “anti-feminist” as a fixed stance toward a more self-aware concern about how opposition itself can become an identity that flattens nuance. What stood out most was the writer’s willingness to examine the tension between conviction and charity—recognizing that even deeply held beliefs about women, culture, and Christian household order can lose moral clarity when they are expressed primarily through opposition rather than constructive articulation.
This essay traces a movement from intellectualized emotional control toward a fuller, embodied Christian understanding of feeling, arguing that what often gets labeled as “spiritual maturity” can quietly drift into a kind of emotional stoicism. Through a mix of personal anecdote, philosophical comparison, and theological reflection, Griffin Gooch contrasts the detached resignation of Socratic stoicism with the deeply affective suffering of Christ, suggesting that Christianity does not bypass emotion but sanctifies it.
What gives Ashaki D. ‘s piece such depth is the attempt to re-anchor patience not as passive waiting, but as an active Christian virtue rooted in humility before God and acceptance of human limitation. By connecting everyday irritations (traffic, technology, communication) to spiritual formation, she argues that patience is not merely practical self-help but a fruit of the Spirit that reshapes how we love others, create, and endure unanswered prayer. The result is a devotional-style reflection that calls for a slower, more surrendered way of living in a world that increasingly resists delay.
Thank you so much for reading!! If you enjoyed this and would like to support my work, tapping the heart helps my writing find its way to others. I’d also love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
God bless you, and see you in the next one!
— Victoria ♡
And you will learn later, hopefully much later, that time is a fist. Hard, tight, relentless, but not steel.
This is so beautifully poignant, and a reminder I really needed today - thank you!