Maybe I’m Not Behind

(soothing music) Headspace Studio. Hi, welcome to Radio Headspace. It's Dora. So I spent my most recent birthday in my favorite forest. No plans, no celebration dinner waiting for me, just me, the trees and the sound of my footsteps on the ground. I was walking slowly, letting myself wander, noticing how the light moved through the branches. And there's something about being in a forest that immediately shifts your nervous system. The pace changes, your body softens, and you remember that you belong to something much older than your to-do list. As I walked, I found myself thinking about the trees as ancestors. Some of them had clearly been there long before me. Some would still be there long after. And then a question surfaced. Have I been a good ancestor? Not in terms of like legacy or achievement, but in the everyday sense. How am I spending my time while I'm here? And that question stopped me. I began reflecting on the last 33 years of my life, the choices I remember, the seasons I moved through the ways in which I've grown, stumbled, learned, and tried again. It was an honest reflection. And honest reflection takes courage. Mindfulness teaches us that reflection is not meant to pull us into regret. It's meant to help us arrive more fully into the present moment. When we reflect with care, we're not asking what did I do wrong? We're asking, how do I want to live from here? Our relationship with time begins to shift when we realize that we're not here to outrun it. We're here to fully inhabit it. I've been thinking a lot about how strange time has felt since 2020. It feels like I've lived many different lives since then. Entire chapters, major transitions, and yet when I name the number of years, it feels surprisingly small. At the same time, I look ahead and imagine what could happen in the next six years, how much can change, how much life can unfold. Even this year feels strange. It's early, but it already feels full, almost heavy, which makes me pause and wonder, what is time really? Who decided how we measure it? Who decided the structure of our days, our work weeks, our pace, and how much of that structure actually supports us? I notice that when I compare myself to others, time immediately tightens. I start feeling behind like I should be further along, like certain parts of my life just need to hurry up. But when I come back to the present moment, something shifts. Right now, nothing is missing. That urgency fades. The anxiety quiets. I remember that life is not happening later. It's happening now. And there's also a deeper layer to my relationship with time that comes from my family. I grew up in an immigrant household where time was never abundant, where survival shaped the rhythm of the days, where rest was earned not assumed. My parents didn't have...