At three in the morning, the city sleeps. No horns. No voices. Just silence. This is when strange thoughts come.
I was awake last night at this hour. Sitting by the window. Watching the clock. Its hands moved slowly. Tick. Tick. Tick. Each tick was a piece of my life disappearing. Gone forever. Never coming back.
A question came to my mind. Am I living? Or am I just existing?
These are not the same thing. A stone exists. A table exists. But they don’t live. Living is something more. Living means feeling. Noticing. Being present. Existing is just… being there. Like furniture.
I thought about my days. What do I do? I wake up. I check my phone. I scroll through pictures of other people’s lives. Their vacations. Their food. Their happiness. Real or fake, I don’t know. But I watch. For hours sometimes. Then I go to work. Come back. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
Is this living?
I remember being young. Everything was new then. The smell of rain on dry earth made me stop walking. A butterfly could hold my attention for ten minutes. I would lie on the roof and count stars. I had nowhere to be. Nothing urgent to do. I was just… alive.
Now I am always busy. But busy doing what? I can’t remember most of my days. They blur together. Monday feels like Wednesday. March feels like July. Years pass and I wonder—where did they go?
This is existing. Not living.
My grandfather lived to be eighty-five. Near the end, I asked him about time. He said something I never forgot. “When you’re young, a year feels like forever. When you’re old, a year feels like a week. You know why? Because you stop paying attention. Days become the same. Nothing new happens. Your mind stops recording.”
He was right. Children live slowly because everything is an adventure. Adults exist quickly because everything is a routine.
I think we all start out living. Then somewhere along the way, we switch to existing. It happens slowly. So slowly we don’t notice. One day we wake up and realize years have passed. We can’t remember them. We were there, but we weren’t really there.
What causes this?
I think it’s the chasing. We chase so many things. Money. Success. Respect. Love. We run and run. We think happiness is waiting at some finish line. When I get this job, I’ll be happy. When I buy this house, I’ll be happy. When I find this person, I’ll be happy.
But happiness is not at the finish line. Happiness is in the running. In the breathing. In the being. We miss it because we’re looking ahead. Always ahead. Never here.
I know a man who worked his whole life to retire comfortably. He saved every penny. Said no to vacations. Skipped family gatherings. Postponed everything for later. Then he retired. Two months later, he died. Heart attack. All that later never came.
This is not a lesson about saving or spending. This is a lesson about presence. He existed for forty years so he could live for a few years at the end. Those few years never arrived. He never lived at all.
We do this in smaller ways too. We eat dinner while watching TV. We walk while checking our phones. We talk to people while thinking about other things. Our bodies are in one place. Our minds are somewhere else. We are never fully anywhere.
This is existing.
Living is different. Living is eating and tasting each bite. Living is walking and feeling the ground under your feet. Living is talking and really listening. Living is being where you are. Completely. Fully. Without division.
It sounds simple. It is the hardest thing in the world.
Our minds don’t want to stay still. They jump from past to future. Regret to worry. Memory to imagination. Rarely do they rest in now. Now is boring, the mind says. Now is ordinary. Let me take you somewhere more interesting.
But now is all we have. The past is gone. The future hasn’t come. Only now exists. If we miss now, we miss everything.
I tried an experiment yesterday. I drank a cup of tea without doing anything else. No phone. No newspaper. No thinking about work. Just tea. I noticed things I never noticed before. The steam rising. The warmth of the cup. The taste changing as it cooled. That cup of tea took ten minutes. It felt longer than my whole morning.
This is living. Small moments, fully experienced.
We don’t need to climb mountains or cross oceans to live. We need to pay attention. That’s all. Pay attention to ordinary things. A child’s laugh. Rain on a window. The way light falls on a wall in the evening. These things are always there. We just don’t see them.
I think about death sometimes. Not in a sad way. In a clarifying way. One day, this will end. All of it. The chasing, the worrying, the planning. Everything will stop. What will matter then?
Not the promotions. Not the bank balance. Not the arguments we won or lost. What will matter is: did I feel my life? Did I notice it? Was I there for it?
The clock keeps ticking. Three fifteen now. Three sixteen. Each second is a gift I can open or ignore. Most seconds, I ignore. I let them pass without noticing. They become part of the blur.
But sometimes—like tonight—I catch one. I hold it. I feel its weight. And in that moment, I am not existing. I am living.
The difference is small. A shift in attention. A choice to be present. But the difference is also everything.
Tomorrow I will probably forget this. I will check my phone first thing in the morning. I will rush through breakfast. I will exist through another day. Old habits are strong.
But maybe, for a few moments, I will remember. Maybe I will stop and breathe. Maybe I will look at something ordinary and really see it. Maybe I will live, even if just for a minute.
That minute will be worth more than the whole day of existing.
The silence is ending now. I can hear birds. The city is waking up. Another day is beginning. Another chance to choose.
Living or existing.
The choice is always there. Every moment. Every breath.
What will you choose today?