You’re born. Your clock starts. Never stopping, never ceasing, waiting to hit zero. You begin your race against time. You grow up, making it from one school to the next. You reminisce about nap time and recess, but your clock has already devoured those things of the past. You play sports. Endless hours of training and preparation and long nights and hard fought games. You lose in the championship one year, then come back the next to win it. Your clock smiles down at you, knowing that the time it has given you was spent well. You love, you fall in love, you fall out of love, your heart gets filled with joy and then stomped all over, and then you pick yourself back up again and learn to love once more. Your clock is impressed that you continue to push on, but that never makes it give you any of your time back. You finally get out of school. You begin to search for a job. You find a job. You pour everything you’ve got into that job. Then your company has a down year and you get laid off. Just like that, the money is gone. Will your clock take pity on you, will it reimburse you any of your time? Absolutely not. You get married, you have kids, and their clocks start just like yours once did so long ago. They grow up and leave to start their own lives, and you miss them. Your clock might be cruel and turn away from you when you cry out to see them again, or it might show just a little bit of mercy and give you Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or a birthday. A chance to bring them home again. You grow old, you retire, you spend your elderly life in peace, until one day it happens. Your clock hits zero, and your time on Earth is over. Now, of course, everyone has their own clock. Some people’s clocks are kinder than others, and some have more time left on the countdown. Some have just begin, and others are about to end. You have no idea how much time is on your clock, or how much time is on anyone else’s. But see, that’s the beauty in it. Sure, it’s no fun not knowing how much time another person has left, or for that matter, how much time you have left either. But that forces us to live every second like it’s your last, because it just very well might be. Show your clock that you plan to use the time it has given you well, and it will treat you with favor in return.