Standing at the threshold of major change, I find myself perpetually engulfed in the heart-rending current of nostalgia. Why is it that forward motion often compels us to turn around and check the dust flying up in our wake?

If there is one granule of wisdom I wish to share with those still floundering in the paradoxical swiftness and sluggishness that constitutes what we know to be time, it is to understand this: the future is untouchable. It doesn’t exist unless you quit living in it.

Allow me to explain.

While I do believe there are certain inevitable fates we all chance upon, I don’t believe our futures are written lying down, and they are certainly not written without our present consent. All of those things you wish for, all of those “when I’m older’s” and “once I get out of school’s” and the wistful, quixotic “someday’s”– they’re all empty without a concrete aim right now. I want to write a book by the time I’m 25. Well, 7 years are going to go by whether I write the damn book or not. Time just keeps sliding by, constant as sunset, constant as dawn.

In other words, the present we live in now was once a very idealized future. Does it even remotely resemble your vision of it two weeks ago? Two months ago? Two years ago?

Perhaps the greatest struggle mankind faces is the race against time. We chase a future that is forever elusive, and we sprint from a past that frequently reminds us of our blunders and bygone sensations. Sometimes, we dawdle on the past, and time wastes not a moment to move on without us. Is there ever a second to catch a breath? To pause and reflect, to cease forward motion and look ahead without running to get there?

It’s not easy. Believe me, I’ve tried to outrun the present. It will pull you back by the collar if it must.

The thing about the present is this: we are allowed to reminisce on those funny or heartbreaking collections of moments we call the past. Additionally, we’re allowed to anticipate a whole new set of moments that will quickly become contemporary “presents,” or as we call it, the future. We are allowed to think think think about any other moment we choose. We can dwell and we can hope and we can ponder and we can aspire.

But the reality of the present is that none of those moments exist anymore, and some never will. All we have control over right now is what’s happening right now.

And this moment is full of limitless possibilities.

As much as I would love to manage the future or alter the past, I have come to realize that my greatest mission is to embrace what is in my power to accomplish at the present time. On the precipice of so much change, so much loss and so much joy and so much knowledge, the best thing I can do is ride this tempestuous current of time and take charge of the here and now.