You Are Not Behind

Somewhere along the way, someone installed a clock inside you that was never supposed to be there. You do not remember when it happened. You cannot point to a single moment or a single conversation that planted it. But it is there, and you know it is there because you feel it running, quietly, persistently, in the background of almost every significant area of your life. It measures. It compares. It calculates the distance between where you are and where you believed you were supposed to be by now. And depending on the results of that calculation, which are almost never favorable, it delivers its verdict in the particular language of quiet panic that has become the background noise of an entire generation.