introduction

October 26, 2025 - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan 

I’ve always been afraid of time.

A sort of instinctual unease would come over me whenever the subject came up — whether in an undergraduate philosophy class or on a meditation retreat. I’d instantly feel a tightening in my gut.

I understood that there was something different about those who could think clearly about time. Their minds seemed to be a bit more computer-y or chessboard-shaped. They had a tendency to think algorithmically or symbolically, sketching their ideas with a mathematical rigor that turned my heart into a vacuum or a labyrinth.

I can’t explain why it’s so difficult for me to approach the concept of time, let alone wrap my mind around it. The way time seems to fade into nothingness or otherwise explode into an infinite specks of dust. The cold mechanical time so well represented in the gears of a fine Swiss watch grinding metallically against itself.

At the same time, as I’ve grown older, the weight of time — both in the beckoning darkness out there in the future, as well as the thickening layers of memory that coat everyone and everything that I know — this weight of time bears down on my shoulders, pressing me into myself.

I understand — clearly, tangibly — that my parents are dying. I can see it spelled out across their bodies and their minds.

I lay in bed — late at night and early in the morning — reflecting upon my past and my decision. Reflecting? Ruminating. Gasping.

I feel — wonderfully and cruelly — consumed by time.

—

But it’s no longer only fear.

Sometimes I sit quietly in the park. I watch the leaves fall and the children play. I feel the magic around me. And this magic can only be described as the most delicate music which is the tapping of time against the skin of this world.

I notice one moment and then the next. I notice the sparkling changes that the sun creates as it reflects off of the fountain. I notice the trickle of sound which is the laughter of a voice far away.

All change is a kind of magic. And what is change? Only time.

What I am trying to say is that there is another side to the cruel machine of time which stubbornly chips away at the totality of our lives. There is the softest, most poetic kind of intimacy that arises between this moment and the next. I sit quietly, legs crossed, on my sofa, and track these moments. I gaze upon their innocent nudity which is exposed, almost sinfully, to my jealous inspection.

—

There is another way of thinking about time which is not captured in equations and physics. No, this kind of time is displayed in the budding of the blossoms in spring and the changing of the autumn leaves in October. Its story is written in the smile which brightens the face of an old friend when they catch my eye through the window of a cafe. Its the melody that leaves us transfixed as we stand at the seashore, gazing out at the heaving waves trusting themselves against a motionless sky.

I know that I exist in time. Perhaps, even, time is my existence.

I plan to spend this year growing accustomed to this obvious reality; learning how it feels and how it thinks. How it seems to sometimes stand perfectly still, and then other times take sudden great leaps.

I’d like to explore my being in time, in whatever way that I can, and grow more intentional and observant and skillful at contorting myself into its spaces.

I will confront the shadow which has haunted me since childhood. After all, it’s about time.