The Time We Are Given

Every once in a while, you come across a quote that feels less like something you’ve read—and more like something you’ve always known:

Even if we repeat thousands of lifetimes,

It is a rare miracle to meet the one we love again.

Therefore, love now without any regrets.

For the time we have to love is not that long.

It comes from the Bodhicharyavatara, written by Shantideva—a quiet, often-overlooked monk from the 8th century who would go on to leave one of the most enduring works on compassion and the human heart.

 

What struck me wasn’t the philosophy.

 

It was the urgency.

 

We go through life as if time is something we can set aside—like a book we’ll get back to later. We assume there will be another morning, another chance, another conversation left unfinished but waiting patiently for us to return.

 

But love doesn’t always work that way.

 

Sometimes it arrives quietly. A presence beside you. A voice that lingers longer than it should. A feeling that something in your life has shifted, even if you can’t yet name it. And just as quietly, it can slip away—missed, delayed, or taken for granted.

 

There’s something deeply human in believing we’ll have more time. More time to say what matters. More time to be honest. More time to love without hesitation.

 

But if there’s any truth in what Shantideva suggests—if even across thousands of lifetimes it is rare to meet the one person who truly changes us—then the moment we’re in right now is not ordinary at all.

 

It’s improbable.

 

Fragile.

 

Almost sacred.

 

What if this is the only moment you’re given? What if the person beside you—the one who changes the way the world feels, even in small, quiet ways—is not someone guaranteed to remain, but someone you have been briefly entrusted with?

 

Would you hesitate?

Or would you finally say the things you’ve been saving?

 

We spend so much of our lives protecting ourselves from loss that we forget to fully step into what we already have. We measure our words. We hold back what matters. We wait for a better time that never quite arrives. But love was never meant to be cautious. It asks to be felt fully, even at the risk of everything that comes with it. Because the deeper regret is not that love ends. It’s that we stood at the edge of it and never stepped in.

 

Shantideva did not write as a romantic. He wrote as a man who understood how brief life is, and how easily we waste what we’ve been given. And yet, in those few lines, he captured something that feels intensely personal: We do not have forever. Not with anyone.

 

So if there is someone in your life—someone who brings a quiet light into your days, someone whose presence makes things feel more complete—don’t wait. Love them now. Speak now. Be present now. Because time is not something we are promised.

 

And this moment—this brief, impossible, beautiful moment—is all we ever truly have.