The present is all we have, the rest is imagination.

I met a guy at the gym today, he was 74. Although he could have told me he was early 60s and I would have believed him.

He asked me about my workout tracker and quickly began to almost plead with me that I should never stop training, to make the most of my body at such a young age. Not to build a great physique, but to have the ability to move and feel strong.

I often feel gratitude for the things I get to do everyday, that I’m lucky enough to wake up without pain and get out of bed without an issue, that I can walk to the gym and lift heavy weights. Some people don’t have the privilege, and more importantly, I know that eventually that will be taken from me too.

He told me about his business and how he hopes to sell and move to Spain eventually.

A reminder to me to remember that even the most successful people would trade all of their material wealth for more time within a heart beat. A further reminder to live whilst you can, to be present and remember that life is not endless and these days don’t repeat.

I’ve written before about this quiet ache I’ve carried. The feeling of swinging between being lost in the past and desperate to escape into the future. Trying to fix myself by becoming something else. Trying to find meaning in things that never really gave me any.

Yet, moments like this remind me... Meaning doesn’t arrive through effort. It arrives through attention.

Seneca says, “While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing is ours except time. We were entrusted by nature with this one fleeting thing, and yet people treat it as though it's the most dispensable.

It slips through our fingers while we’re dreaming about tomorrow.

It snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future.

The whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately.”

Spending a lot of my time running away from my past and running toward something else hasn’t left me much time to remember the here and now. But this man invoked more gratitude in me today than I could have instilled myself, and for that I am grateful.