Well, hello there. My name is Morgan Harper-Nichols. I'm an artist and a writer, and this is a space where I share words that I hope can make a little room for you to slow down and take a few deep breaths as you prepare for whatever lies ahead. Thanks for being here today. And now on to today's episode.

One of the hardest realities to face in life is that no matter who we are or what we do,

eventually we will run out of time, even with the best time management skills. even when we feel like we are making the most

of the time we are given, there never seems to be enough of it for all the things that we want to do.

This reality forces us to make hard choices when it comes to prioritizing what and who we want to spend our time with.

But there's another side of this. Because we get to choose how we spend the time we have,

we also get to fill our lives with moments that make us forget about time altogether. When we prioritize what we love and what will make

us joyful, the pressure to use this time wisely disappears. There are thousands of instances where

paying attention to time is pretty useful, but there are billions of other

instances where time doesn't matter at all. We may measure the progression of a career or a

relationship by how long it takes to reach a certain milestone, but when we are leaning into

the present moment, when we're laughing our deepest belly

laughs, when we're not occupied with counting the seconds, when we're dancing along to our favorite

song, we're not counting the minutes. When we're lost in the moment with a person we love,

or immersed in a book that speaks to the lowest

octaves of our soul, we're not worried about the hours we spend in that space. We may not be

able to give up on keeping track of time altogether, but maybe we can seek to create more moments in our lives where it's not at the forefront of our minds.

Here's a poem that I wrote about identifying with time and learning to release that pressure around the relationship that we have with time.

Perhaps the time we spend worrying if we'll have enough time in the future,

to do all the things we want to do, can be spent looking for things in the present moment

that awaken us to the point of forgetting about time altogether.

Perhaps we can mark our calendars and check our watches while also recognizing,

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