“Why do you stay in a prison when the door is so wide open?” by Rumi
Beauty of life is because time ceases. The gap between one moment to the next is infinite. According to the mathematicians, there’s an infinite gap between one minute to the next. But if you take it on the other hand, the same infinity that exists between moments is never truly experienced by us. For us it is just a single, continuous flow.
So while time, in theory, stretches endlessly between any two points, in reality it slips past us without pause. We cannot stop in between those infinite gaps, nor can we return once a moment is gone. And that is where the beauty lies-not in the infinity itself, but in our inability to hold onto it. Each moment arrives, exists briefly, and disappears forever, giving life its sense of urgency and meaning.
There have been so many moments in my life that I wished and wished that I could live once more. And there are moments in my life that I wished to go back and redo. And most of all there have always been times when I wished I knew what was going to happen in the future because uncertainty, regret, and joy are core emotions that we can’t live without. And yet, it is exactly these things-the not knowing, the inability to return, the permanence of what has passed-that shape the depth of our existence. If we could relive every moment, fix every mistake, or foresee every outcome, life would lose its weight. The infinite gaps between moments would no longer matter, because nothing would truly be at stake.
Regret teaches us, uncertainty drives us forward, and joy reminds us why any of it matters at all. We stand between what is gone and what has yet to come, never able to fully grasp either, and that fragile position is what makes us human. So perhaps the beauty of life is not just that time ceases, but that it moves, unceasingly, irreversibly carrying us through an infinity we can never fully touch, yet somehow still deeply feel.
So, this article is going to be about waiting. We wait for many things to happen. We wait for the perfect time to arrive, the perfect weather, the perfect person, and the perfect… But the thing that we don’t know is that while we are waiting, life is not. It keeps moving, quietly, relentlessly, opening and closing doors we don’t even notice. In that waiting, we miss an infinite number of possibilities that could have taken place if we had only had the courage to begin. Because life waits for no one.
I can still remember when I was 18, when I wanted to start learning to drive, and I’m twenty one now. Sadly, I still don’t have my license. And the gap between eighteen to twenty one has just flown by so fast that I can still remember it as if it were yesterday. The unfortunate truth is that I can never go back to the girl I was at eighteen. And if I could turn back time, I would definitely have taken my license back then. That’s just a simple example to show how quickly time flows and how it is always too late to turn back once you finally realize it.
The same thing happened to me a while ago when I was looking for the “perfect” moment to go on a hike. I kept waiting for the right day, the right mood, the right company. But days passed, weeks passed, and that perfect moment never really arrived. And then one day, I realized maybe the moment was never supposed to be perfect. Maybe it was just supposed to be lived.
Because perfection is something we imagine, but time is something we lose. We think waiting will give us better outcomes, better timing, better versions of life. But more often than not, waiting only takes us further away from the very experiences we are hoping for. The truth is, most meaningful things in life begin imperfectly, on random days, in uncertain moods, without guarantees.
I took time to write this down because I thought everybody needed a reminder, at least once in their life, to stop waiting for the “perfect” moment to arrive. Go chase that dream, wear that hairstyle, try that hair color, date that person, and most importantly, listen to your heart. Whenever it feels like it’s not the perfect moment, remind yourself that everything truly beautiful in this world is nothing but imperfect.
Written By: –
Abeetha De Silva
( University of Peradeniya)
