When the clouds will pass, the leaves will fade, the sun will set and you will take your last breath in this world. I write this not to strike fear in you, or to urge you to live to a degree of meritorious spontaneity to make up for what life you think you may be missing. You are not missing out on a life you could be living - you are living it. Rather, I want to invite you to pause, to put away the list you made, stop your scrolling, your rushing from one place to another, your worrying about your future, and to take a moment, a breath even, and reflect on this. That this moment, this here and now, where we have arrived, is rare and sacred; it is a precious gem held delicately in our hands even if we know not the value, even if we will squander it on something that we will forget.

We do not know the gift of time. The days are slow, but the years pass by swiftly, the changes are so small, so minute, we don’t feel the difference as the clock ticks. We think things stay the same; they don’t. Time is relentless, it marches forward ruthlessly, not waiting for our sudden late realisation that we will not be here much longer. But when the realisation arrives, howsoever it may arrive, it colours the world beautiful, gives meaning to every fleeting moment, every passing interaction, every instance we would otherwise forget. And you realise - even though some may realise it later than others, and some may never realise at all - that we are all in this together. This madness, this cacophony, this bewilderment called life, we live on this planet we call earth, floating through a universe full of dying stars. No one, no one, survives it alone. We are all we have.

Some may say, nobody cares and that no one is coming to save you - but I do not believe this to be true. Many people care and many people will save you, but not in the way you think. They will show you they care and simultaneously save you with a smile that brightens up your day as you walk past, a delightful conversation at the counter whilst you pay for your groceries, at the bus stop, where the line drawn between two strangers is erased and you laugh like old friends, or at work, the friendships that blossoms from colleagues to best friends, to auntie and uncle, and the birthday party of the children. They will save you, only insofar as you are willing to be saved. In the same way that you can only appreciate a sunset, only insofar as you are willing to gaze into the horizon; but the same transcendental beauty passes us every day regardless.

So, here, now, in these times of uncertainty, where the tomorrows we took for granted no longer seem promised at all, I can only urge you to remember that this will all one day pass. And so with that knowledge, it is these moments that we must cherish. The friend that we lost, the book we haven’t made time to read, the poem that you’ve been trying to write, the words we dream of saying, the places that we have been dreaming of travelling to, the tree that we wished to plant, whatever it is you dream of, from the big dream, to the small quiet moments. Live it, cherish it, for this - in the face of all the suffering - this is how we save the world, how we save each other, and ultimately, this is how we save ourselves.