I’m sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office passing the time by listening to music. But as my mind wonders off this woman’s voice, next to me, keeps rising. She is nagging at her husband like we women do. “You forgot to take out the trash. You never help me around the house. I do everything.” --- You know those one way conversations were everything is generalized and exaggerated.

At the sight of her husband not responding she asks exasperated - “If I fell off the face of the earth you wouldn’t even notice would you?”

“YEAH!” says the man loudly “Hello! You’d be on the news. “Woman who fell off the face of the earth.” I’d be on the news too! “Husband of such said woman”.” At the sound of this she starts laughing. And he gently grabs her hand and kisses it as she tells him she loves him.

And I start to think how sometimes we get so wrapped up by life and its daily strain we forget the most important things. The things we so badly try to hold on to in a moment can cease to exist. People seldom say I love you and when they do its too late or love goes.

It seems to me that from the moment we are born a time stamp is placed on our foreheads. Everything, from the moment you

take your first breath is decided by time. When you are young it feels like time is long and far. We spend our whole childhood waiting for “first moments”. When it comes to relationships - it’s no different. We spend our time waiting. Some at the end of a table waiting for a date to arrive. At the end of the phone waiting for someone to call. Or at the end of a lifetime waiting for love to appear.

Writing this I was asked to center on one piece of advice. And this is it- the thing that is so precious, so rarely grasped is what we have very little of. After facing so many life-threatening moments in the past two years, I’ve learned that time is a luxury we cannot afford to lose. And that no matter how torn things seem to be there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome as long as we still have time.

See it is true a single moment, person, can define our lives. Every person is a life experience and every story has a different ending. And you could be 8 and an “I love you” follows sharing a pudding cup. Or you can be 80 and an “I love you” follows a lifetime of commitment. But true love, deep, and honest, pure love is the only thing that will get you through all the ups and downs, all the twist and turns of a story… and therefore it should never be gambled or taken for granted. Whether it’s the love you feel for your family, your friends, your children or maybe even for that special someone in your life right now. It makes everything fall into place, every moment worth enduring at the end of the day, every story worth telling.

We all search for happiness as if it’s a moment that is sure to be outlived by the next. But what if tomorrow never comes? What if your life ended the minute you stopped reading these words? Or 5 minutes from now, maybe in 5 days or 5 years even... To be truly happy in this system, in all honesty, is not defined by the quantity of time we have but by the quality that we spend it on. But what is all the time in the world really worth if you spent all of it longing and searching, planning and hoping?

Eventually the clock will stop; a hello will be met with a goodbye. You might spend a lifetime never being able to say what you wanted to say. Never being able to love how you wanted to love. Because once a loss is eminent you have run out of time. You won’t get to say I’m sorry. Or even have time to fix what maybe, you, yourself unraveled. Life, death, its bound to happen. I’ve learned that nothing in this world makes us more powerless than death. When it happens, its over, and you have no say in the matter. You won’t get a second chance or third or fourth even. There won’t be a grain of sand left to count. And the “I could have, would have’s” in life will never even get a chance to be written.

This life is fleeting right in front of us and we have yet to find a way to be content with how we are spending it. It is said that sometimes we have to forget who we thought we were and really acknowledge what makes us truly happy. My advice to all is simple - Why must it take a drastic turn of events for us to evaluate our lives? Stop reading fairytales and watching others. Live freely and happily, love passionately and purely. Because father time waits for no one. Because life it self will not wait for you to arm yourself or even begin to waste it. It will write in pen. And that ending you thought you had every right to write will be written for you.