Week 8: Swimming in Time

3–5 minutes

Dear You,

This week, I didn’t do anything big, but I did a lot in small ways. Mostly, I readjusted to life here in Cali. Somehow, the week has felt like a month. Isn’t it strange how time can stretch and shrink? Some days pass painfully slow, while others disappear in a blink. Maybe it’s because my environment shifted so drastically.

What I realized this week is that you can do anything you want. I decided to take this internship and start this 6 month in-between period in my life. You could decide tomorrow to fly to Ireland and just live there. You could pick up a new sport or hobby. You could wear clothes you normally wouldn’t. We sometimes forget we have free will, and with it, the chance to add a little more magic to the everyday. You can pretend you’re on a quest, or that the world is whispering back to you. Sometimes, I talk to the trees. I tell them about my day. The palm trees here are a refreshing switch. I know it may sound strange, but maybe you understand. The art of adding magic to reality is real, if you choose to see it.

This week, I went to Festival Petronio Álvarez, a celebration of Pacific Colombian culture. I tried new foods. I listened to new Spanish music. I explored new restaurants and saw more of Cali. But my favourite moment was when I went swimming at night. The pool was empty, just me and the water. I played my music, swam until I was tired, then floated with my ears under the surface, listening only to my breath. I looked up at the Colombian sky, hardly believing that I was here. It felt like I was floating in space. Floating in time, the present. In that moment, I felt like part of the water itself. I played little games in the pool by myself. I’ve never really stopped playing. I was embarrassingly old when I finally put my Barbie’s away, but I think that’s part of the magic of life: to never stop being a child.

It’s funny, I feel like I’m five, and ten, and seventeen, and twenty-one, and twenty-five all at once. Every version of me still lives inside me, watching with awe and pride. I honour them by playing, pretending, and imagining, because I never want the magic to leave. You know that sharp ache of nostalgia when you see a video of “2000s Halloween” or “2000s Christmas”? That deep longing to go back? I think we can bring that feeling back. Back then, everything was magical because we lived in the present. We weren’t worrying about the future or replaying the past; we were just there. And maybe that’s the key.

As kids, we didn’t know what it meant to be older. Now that we’re older, we forget what it meant to be kids. We live so much in what was or what will be that we miss the now. But the magic still lives here, in the present moment, if we let ourselves see it.

A very important person in my life said something to me this week: a year ago, neither of us could have imagined being where we are now. We had entirely different visions of the future. And yet here we are, living lives we never dreamed of. I never thought I’d be in a different country. I used to be (and sometimes still find myself) overthinking and stressing about the future and what I need to be doing. But all I needed to do was just take it slowly. Because the truth is: the future doesn’t exist yet. The past and the present do. And the way to make the past magical is to live fully in the present.

Maybe a year from now, I’ll be doing something I can’t even imagine today. And when I look back, I’ll feel that same ache of nostalgia. Not because time disappeared, but because I let myself truly live in it.

Swimming alone at night, with no distractions. Just the water on my skin and the rhythm of my breath. That was magic. And I want to live every day like that. Even if I’m home, doing nothing. Because doing nothing, being slow, being present. Maybe that’s the point?

From,

Cali