A dear friend recently told me that a family member’s illness had made her fully realize, for the first time, that time is finite. It sounds silly, because we all learn early on that time is bounded. Still, I firmly believe most of us do not truly internalize the finiteness of time, of our time, until it literally punches us in the stomach and leaves us gasping for air. For me it’s been a gift and a curse, the sense of fragility that comes with the realization that everyone’s time runs out, that really my time will end.

A few years ago I was surrounded by a lot of death in a small amount of time, with three people in my closest family dying not of old age, one out of the blue, two after excruciating illnesses. I think often about the sheer physical indignity of those last months and how it all ended, which we rarely contemplate in our youth/health. I think about the fact that one day we will do something we love for the last time without realizing, whether that’s going somewhere special, playing an instrument, going for a run, seeing a friend, the mundane stuff that makes up a life.

That period of darkness changed my relationship with time and by extension with everyone and everything I do. This has given me the impetus to do things I might not have done otherwise, like quitting a great job without any plan besides exploring the world for months. On the other hand, it has made everything in my life almost unbearably fragile.

Sometimes that manifests in weird ways, like crying in a silent Shinkansen over something really stupid.

After arriving at the station a whopping four hours early because of misaligned check-out time and waiting on the track for 25+ minutes, we didn’t realize I’d done something foolish until it was too late. I had misread the signs (or rather, not bothered to google translate and actually read them), and semi-unconsciously assumed that only our train was leaving at 15:23 (how could more than one train leave at such a random time from just six tracks, I assume my subconscious might have reasoned), and gotten us on the wrong platform with laughable, unthinking overconfidence. By the time we realized our special scenic train was on the other platform all along and ran across, it was departing, with Japanese precision, without us.

One hour and 150 dollars later, as tears streaked down my face on a viewless bullet train, I thought about the real reason a grown woman was crying like a child over something I could logically identify as pretty silly: missing a train. I was crying because I missed a beautiful train ride that I most likely wouldn’t get a chance to repeat. I had probably wasted my one opportunity to experience that particular view, to see that specific place, and that I couldn’t bear. It was reportedly the most beautiful train ride in Japan, and I missed it because of something dumb.

In the deep recesses of my soul, where for the past five years a timer has incessantly been ticking away my remaining hours on this planet, lies a burning desire to see and do and feel and make as much as possible before time runs out. This timer makes everything and everyone feel breakable, or like I’m grasping at something likely to vanish in a wisp of smoke the moment I lay my hands on it. It makes me cry over ridiculous things. It’s infuriating and exhausting. Then again, I might not be freely exploring this random beautiful place in Japan to begin with if it weren’t for having discovered that pesty timer.