Borrowed Time: Living on Schedules That Aren’t Ours

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“Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’” – Lao Tzu

We’re all given the same twenty-four hours each day, yet many of us move through life as if those hours belong to someone else. We set alarms to wake up, not when our bodies feel ready, but when the schedule demands it. We do not eat when hunger strikes, but when the lunch break ends. From dawn to dusk, we follow obligations, deadlines, calendars, and routines we didn’t fully choose.

Somewhere along the way, time stopped feeling like it was ours. We started living on borrowed time—borrowed from institutions, from expectations, from everyone but ourselves.

The Inherited Timeline

As children, we’re introduced early to time as discipline. School bells ring. Homework is due. Lunch is timed. Sleep is scheduled. We’re trained to follow structure before we understand freedom.

By the time we’re adults, society hands us a life plan with invisible milestones: graduate by 21, build a career by 25, marry before 30, have children soon after, and succeed early—or risk being called “late.”

But life doesn’t unfold neatly. Some people start over at 40. Others find their calling in retirement. Some spend years wandering before they root. These journeys are no less meaningful—only less expected.

Still, we feel guilty for taking our time.

The world often mistakes slowness for failure. We measure worth by speed—how fast you grow, how soon you arrive. But there’s wisdom in delay. There’s power in pacing yourself.

“You can’t go back and change the beginning,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

When the Clock Becomes a Cage

We’ve built a culture that worships productivity. Get up at 5 a.m. Plan your day by the minute. Track your steps, monitor your sleep, and record every hour. We squeeze more out of each moment, chasing peak efficiency like it holds the key to happiness.

But ask yourself, who benefits from all this hustle?

Somewhere, time stopped being space for living and became a scoreboard. We turned rest into a task, and presence into performance.

It’s no wonder we feel exhausted.

The more we manage time, the less we seem to enjoy it.

A Wake-Up Moment

Two years ago, I was drowning in deadlines as an English literature student. My days were stacked with dense texts, analytical essays, and back-to-back assignments. I wasn’t reading to understand—I was reading to keep up.

I remember scheduling a 20-minute nap between finishing a paper on Chaucer and starting Aristotle’s Poetics. Rest had become something I needed to plan, not something I allowed myself naturally.

One evening, after re-reading the same paragraph from Shakespeare three times, I paused. I stared at the mirror and asked a question I hadn’t dared ask before:

“Whose time am I living on?”

That single question cracked everything open.

Reclaiming Time for Yourself

Taking back your time doesn’t mean rejecting responsibility—it means rejecting urgency where it doesn’t belong. It means saying, “Not now” to the myth that everything must happen fast.

Growth isn’t always visible. Progress doesn’t always follow a timeline.

Must every email be answered today? Must every goal be achieved by 30?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” wrote Annie Dillard.

If your days are packed with panic and pressure, what kind of life are you building?

To reclaim time is to reclaim attention—to slow down enough to see what’s real. The way the sunlight moves through your window at 4 p.m. The quiet joy of an unhurried meal. The beauty of silence that isn’t filled by demand.

Time Is Not a Task

We treat time like something to conquer. We manage it, hack it, and optimize it. But time isn’t a project—it’s an experience. It stretches and bends, especially during the moments that matter most.

Grief doesn’t follow a schedule. Neither does love. Or healing. Or inspiration. These things refuse to be rushed.

We don’t need more hours in the day. We need fewer expectations of what each hour must produce.

Some of the most profound parts of being human happen not in what we do, but in how we simply exist.

Living at Your Own Pace

You may not control what life brings. But you can choose how you move through it.

You can wake up slowly. You can spend time without counting it. You can choose presence over productivity. You can measure your day not by what you got done, but by how it felt—how deeply you listened, how kindly you treated yourself, and how fully you were there.

Mary Oliver once asked:

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

You don’t need to answer that in a hurry.

Final Thoughts: You Are Not Late

Living on borrowed time wears us down. But the moment we ask whose clock we’re following, we start returning to ourselves.

You are not behind. You’re not off-track. You’re not “too late.”

You’re just beginning to live on your own time.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot

Author Profile

Farhat Sakeena

I'm Farhat Sakeena, a certified English language teacher and proofreader with a BS Hons in English Language and Literature from Govt College University Faisalabad. Holding a 120-hour TEFL certification from World TESOL Academy, I've honed my skills in teaching English online and providing high-quality proofreading services. As a dedicated freelancer, I help students and professionals improve their language skills and refine their writing.

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