The Weight of Borrowed Days

 For in truth, we were not made merely to be efficient, to be useful, to be consumed by the world’s endless demands. We were made to be. To breathe deeply of the morning air, to marvel at the way light moves across water, to lose ourselves in laughter, to listen to the voice of the wind in the trees, to stand in awe at the great mystery of our own aliveness.

What is it that makes us end each day with the quiet ache that we have not truly lived our hours, but have instead been lived by them? How is it that we wake with a heart brimming with intention, yet arrive at nightfall feeling emptied, as if the day has slipped through our fingers like water through a broken vessel?

There is a weariness that settles upon the soul when life is spent in service to what does not nourish us. It is a tiredness beyond the body, one that belongs to the spirit, the deep places within us that long for meaning, yet find themselves caught in the machinery of necessity. We move through the hours answering the world’s call, fulfilling obligations, meeting expectations, tending to what must be done—and yet, in the quiet moments before sleep, we wonder: Where was I in this day? Did I move through it with intention, or did it move through me, carrying me along like a leaf in the current?

To live, truly live, is not the same as to merely exist within the framework of time. A day can be filled to the brim with action and yet be empty of presence. A life can be spent in ceaseless motion and yet be devoid of meaning. We often think that busyness is proof of purpose, that the fullness of a schedule reflects the fullness of a life. But time does not ask to be filled; it asks to be honored. There is a difference between a day that is occupied and a day that is inhabited.

Perhaps we feel used by our days because we have forgotten how to claim them as our own. We wake, and already the world is waiting for us—messages unanswered, duties unattended, obligations piling at our feet. Before we have had a moment to gather ourselves, the day has begun, and we are swept into its current. It is no wonder, then, that by nightfall, we feel as though we have been emptied, scattered, pulled in too many directions.

But what if, instead of being carried by the momentum of duty, we entered our days with the quiet clarity of presence? What if, before we surrendered ourselves to the needs of the world, we first turned inward and listened to the quiet voice that whispers of what truly matters?

There is a way to meet time with reverence, to take each hour as a sacred offering rather than a force that must be managed. To do this, we must learn to pause. Not just in the brief intervals between one task and another, but in a way that reorients our relationship to time itself. We must learn to punctuate our days with presence, to let silence stretch between the noise, to create space within the rushing current where we can hear our own soul speaking.

For in truth, we were not made merely to be efficient, to be useful, to be consumed by the world’s endless demands. We were made to be. To breathe deeply of the morning air, to marvel at the way light moves across water, to lose ourselves in laughter, to listen to the voice of the wind in the trees, to stand in awe at the great mystery of our own aliveness.

It is not that work is wrong, nor that duty is a burden to be cast off. There is deep meaning in offering ourselves to the world, in tending to what must be tended, in fulfilling what is asked of us. But we must do so from a place of wholeness, from a center that is rooted in presence, rather than depletion.

Perhaps the remedy for this ache, this feeling of being lived rather than living, is not to do more, but to do less with greater reverence. To carve out spaces where our own voice can be heard, where we are not simply responding to the world, but are in conversation with it. To move through time not as something to be conquered, but as something to be cherished.

Then, perhaps, we might come to the end of the day not with a sense of having been used, but with the quiet satisfaction of having inhabited our time fully, of having been present to ourselves and to the world in a way that nourishes rather than depletes. And when night falls, we will close our eyes not in exhaustion, but in gratitude, knowing that this day was truly lived.

All my Love and Light,
An