Sometimes I feel like I’m running late for my life.

Like time is taking over.

Like time has it out for me.

Like there’s never enough time for all the things I want to do. For all the things I think I should be doing.

Some of this is large scale:

Shouldn’t I be married by now?

What about kids—when do they get here?

When will my bank account balance not induce fear?

Will I ever feel like an actual adult?

But most of the time, my apparent lack of time pops up on average days stuffed with too much work and not enough fun, too many responsibilities and not enough downtime, too much on the to-do list and not enough on the quit-worrying-about-this list.

And sometimes, a whole day goes by and I realize that I haven’t taken it all in. I haven’t been fully present for more than a few moments. I’ve been so caught up in planning and thinking and doing that I haven’t given any energy to just being.

Recently, after a particularly exhausting day at work—a stressful, rage-inducing, oh-dear-God-why kind of day—I found one of those moments.

While tying up some loose ends and trying to pry my aching hands away from the computer, I turned on the TV to find About Time (one of my favorite movies) playing. I left it on as background noise, enjoying the music and laughing quietly at the funny parts I had memorized.

Then the best part came on—the part that always makes me cry. The part that made me stop and pay attention. And so I took three minutes out of the 1,440 minutes we are given each day and I let myself listen to the words spoken:

“And in the end, I think I’ve learned the final lesson from my travels in time. And I’ve even gone one step further than my father did. The truth is I now don’t travel back at all—even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day to enjoy it, as if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary ordinary life.”

Over the past few days, whenever I’ve felt time creeping up on me—or coming at me like a runaway train hopped up on methamphetamines—I press play on this video. Something about the words, the music, the simple displays of everyday life brings me back.

Back to the moment. Back to myself. Back to just being—at least for now.

Bonus video:

Author: Nicole Cameron

Image: YouTube