When every day feels too short — and life feels like it’s racing past.
You wake up. Check your phone. Reply to a few messages. Rush to get ready. Another meeting. Another deadline. Another week has gone by.
And suddenly, it’s mid-year. Or your birthday. Or someone else’s funeral. And you realise: time is flying. But not just in the usual “life gets busy” way — more like in a quiet, existential panic kind of way.
If you’ve ever felt like time is slipping through your fingers, you’re not alone. Søren Kierkegaard — writing nearly two centuries ago — might not have known about smartphones or back-to-back Zoom calls, but he did understand that strange ache: the feeling that life is passing you by.
Living Forward, Thinking Backwards
Kierkegaard once wrote:
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
It sounds poetic — and it is —, but it also captures the disconnect we often feel with time. We’re constantly moving forward, chasing goals or avoiding regrets, but rarely stopping to ask whether we’re living in a way that actually matters.
Kierkegaard saw this as a kind of spiritual sleepwalking — being so busy with the day-to-day that we forget to reflect on the big picture. Time slips by not just because we’re overscheduled, but because we’re distracted from meaning.
The Clock vs. Eternity
In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard explores what it means to be truly yourself. And for him, that can’t happen without facing your own mortality — not in a gloomy, morbid way, but in a way that wakes you up.
He reminds us that we’re not just passing time. We’re beings-in-eternity. Which means that every moment matters. Not because you’re being productive, but because you’re a soul in the process of becoming.
When we forget this — when we lose that eternal perspective — we start living as if time is just something to fill. Something we never have enough of. Something to outrun.
And so we rush. And we scroll. And we panic.
Time Anxiety Is a Soul Signal
That feeling of urgency — of time slipping away — might not be a scheduling issue. It might be something deeper.
Kierkegaard might call it a signal from the soul:
“Are you paying attention?”
“Are you living truthfully?”
“Are you becoming who you’re meant to be?”
The urgency of now isn’t just about fitting more in. It’s about waking up to eternity in the present moment — choosing to live with intention, not just momentum.
Slow Down. Look Inward. Choose What Matters.
Kierkegaard doesn’t give us easy answers. He doesn’t offer five steps to time management. What he does offer is far more radical:
A call to inwardness.
A call to truth.
A call to live before God, not the crowd.
Because when you start living from the inside out — with eternity in view — time no longer feels like something to chase. It becomes a gift. A sacred now.
💡 If time feels like it’s slipping through your hands, maybe you don’t need a new planner. Maybe you need a new perspective. Dive deeper into Kierkegaard’s view of time, eternity, and identity in
👉 The Sickness Unto Death: A Modern Translation for the 21st Century
— a thought-provoking guide for anyone who’s tired of just getting through the day.