A green leaf was falling from a tree I could see through the window while playing Dead Island on my PlayStation 3. A few years passed, and while brushing my teeth, I was able to catch a glimpse of the top of a beautiful palm tree through the window again. Time passed, and another tree, this time with yellow leaves, fell into my memories as I looked at a magnificent countryside landscape on a train ride.

I have this feeling that, in a glimpse, I’ve grown up. When I was younger, I wished to be older, and nowadays I realize that those days were much easier. Being a kid, when allowed to be one, is far easier, but usually a kid is not capable of acknowledging this ease. I wasn’t very much a scholar-kind-of kid, but I wasn’t bad either… definitely, I praise studying far more nowadays. It’s funny how we praise certain things that require time when we don’t have enough of it.

Time is not a subject of our lives; rather, we are its subject. We are actors in a play within a majestic, timeless universe. Thinking about our finitude isn’t common, and I have a feeling it is almost entirely avoided. We are part of a small segment of it all.

Since last year, I’ve been wondering how I want to spend something irreplaceable as time. There are so many things I want to learn and see… yet immediate responsibilities push me far away from them, or is it simply that I fail to accomplish them myself? The complexity of the world we live in, with this huge amount of information spreading ultra-fast and with society’s pressure to conform to uncreative standards, is exhausting.

Yet it is the idea of an end that ensures the beauty of time. It is our greatest and sincerest friend, one who teaches and encourages us to be better, not for it or for others, but for ourselves. Of course, the concept of “better” may vary for each person’s reality, but it is never too late to do what you expect of yourself. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I said we are actors, not merely observers.

We can’t change reality on a macro scale, but we can change the little things. As stated in Rule #32, written by Columbus in Zombieland: “Enjoy the little things”. And that’s what it’s all about, it’s about the process and the time spent. The outcome isn’t that important, since as humans, or at least in our attempt to be one, we are always living in the past or waiting for a dreamy future. We must learn to focus on the present and enjoy this process of becoming what we hope to become.

As a somewhat stubborn person, I can’t deny that my mom was right… time will always teach us, or at least try, because it’s in no rush; it has all the time in the world.