It is night, a time when our side of the planet faces away from the Sun’s light and it is dark. I am in the twenty-third hour of a twenty four hour day. A day is the time it takes for our planet to complete one full spin around its own axis. The day is Tuesday, the third day of a seven day week. It is the sixteenth day of the thirty-one days in the month of March, the third month out of the twelve months in a year. The year is Two Thousand and Twenty One in the Gregorian calendar, which began with the birth of Jesus Christ. A year is how long it takes for our planet to complete one full spin around its Sun. I am in the United States of America. I am on Planet Earth of the Milky Way Galaxy, as we call it. 

Up until now my life consisted of a series of advancements and milestones. My first birthday. Learning to walk, to read. To ride a bike, to share. Some time after that I needed to pass the eighth grade to move on to high school. I needed to pass tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades to graduate high school. I needed to advance to college by filling out the Common App. I needed to graduate college to get a good job…

Now I am twenty three years old and the heavy churn of Advancement has finally come to a grinding halt. 

Its ghost still yanks at my conscience.

I learned how to Advance, 

now I have to learn how to Be Still.

To Be Here Now.

To live for today. Not for some moment of completion in the future.

The next milestone is a graduation from life, from this planet, from time itself.

I don’t want to spend my time waiting and waiting…

Because then, what’s the point